Coloured pencil on art paper. w--cm h--cm. Undated. Unsigned. Property of artist's family.

Nearly all of Carl's work was figurative, but there was a strong element of abstraction throughout. Often a finished work that represents a scene in nature, like this one, is built out of a free-form scribble that is purely abstract. In this, he worked in the opposite direction that most artists would, starting with a subject drawn from nature, however freely, and working down to its pure form. These arbutus trees are a good example: their multi-hued, primarily reddish trunks with their peeling bark, their gnarled growth often in very rocky locations, these are well represented in the final drawing; but consider the outlines, the space enclosed by the two twisting trunks, and you see pure forms.