The image of Reclining Nude (Abstract), printed on the reverse side of linen prepared for oil paint, was created on the 20th of November 2014 at the Todd-White photographic studio, in the basement of 3 Clifford Street, Mayfair, London. It is a digital image of a kantha blanket from southern India or Bangladesh. These blankets are hand-sewn by groups of women working together, recycling scraps of cotton fabric from worn-out saris and other clothes which they sew together in layers with white thread in a wide stitch in the direction of the longest dimension, spaced about a centimetre apart. They have two very different sides: one with the best fabrics, the other where the most worn fabrics or with holes have been patched with fabrics that contrast with what they patch, giving them compositions devised only by chance.

This image of the patched side was the first of a series I called Blanket pictures in 2016 because they reproduced the original blankets in their exact large dimensions and colours and, hung on a gallery wall, they could be mistaken for paintings. In fact, my intention was that these blankets were mistaken for paintings, and they were, from afar.

Now, in this new version, the kantha blanket once again imitates a painting, but with its colour having been removed, its status as a culturally distant artefact has disappeared. Its original portrait orientation was changed to landscape and, inadvertently, in one of the digital processes it underwent, its proportions were increased. I see it now as a black and white Western abstract painting from the 1950s or 60s by a Benoît Chanteau, a Will Fisher, a Rosalind Kramer, a Paolo Pansardi. If the reclining nude is not visible, it is certainly because it is an abstract.