Denise Penfold: Decisive Descent This painting is an expression of the feelings Penfold had at the end of this year, when the violence and unrest caused by the State of Emergency was becoming very evident to all South African citizens, regardless of their 'colour.' Tensions were running high on street level, and Penfold felt as though "things [were] coming apart." The long rectangular format of the work forms a sense of constriction. Penfold works by putting brush strokes on canvas and letting the marks dictate the forms that evolve. Of this work she says: "In Decisive Descent the works are now falling . . . they didn't have a choice. The figures are still bound, but one has a limb missing . . . there's a sense of disintegration."