The Lark in the Morning: Reworked Drawing, 1994

crawled across the upper edge of The Lark in the Morning I is the phrase, "the lark in the morning she rises off her nest and comes home in the evening with dew on her breast." Graham's use of handwriting is like that of the northern California painter Squeak Carnwath. It's a deeply personal calligraphy. It's anti-advertising. Its clumsiness reminds us that we are clumsy; we are not the polished image advertising alleges to mirror.

In his writings (he's a brilliant writer), Graham reveals himself to be obsessed with the concept of "silence." He repeatedly asserts that words are not part of the process. Perhaps his idea is that a good painting renders the viewer mute, as it did the artist, and that this silence is a blessing certain artworks can extend to the viewer. (The notion of "blessing" brings to mind the moment in Hemingway's posthumously published Islands in the Stream when the older brother says to his younger brother, who is thrilled about an accomplishment and eager to speak of it, "Don't put your mouth on it.") Without words there can be no lies. And only in the absence of lies does there exist the possibility, though certainly not the guarantee, of truth.

In addition to the comparison to Kiefer, Graham's work is also likened to that of Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele. But Graham achieves emotional crescendo with a limited number of literal references. His paintings are essentially non-narrative and non-representational. Also, while Bacon's and Kiefer's works are haunted by a sense of loss, Graham's, curiously, are infused with a sense of presence. Every element is held alive in the immediate moment, just on the point of vanishing.

The Blackbird Suite, 1994

Graham traces his influence to Della Francesca, Van Eyck, and Grünewald. When he looks to these old masters, I think he is looking at paintings that, by means of elaborate encodement, map the struggle of living with the unknowable. To believe in God the mind must navigate a blind curve. Yet simple acceptance of the reality our own existence, with or without God - on this seemingly arbitrary ball of stone, rotating, orbiting and hurling outward through a cold, mostly empty void - requires no less difficult a leap of faith.

The paintings' credence emanates in part from Graham's dark, earthy palette. The wonder one experiences in an encounter with them - a blend of ecstasy and melancholy, barely stirred - is similar to that which one experiences in epiphanic moments in real life, whether on crowded, dirty, city streets or all alone in pristine nature. It is a quality of light, a feeling in the air, an unexpected frisson that links the body of the seer to the body of that which is seen.

His extraordinary drawing talent is, quite simply, pure virtuosity. The line drawings of the human form induce an almost violent pleasure, like a single gong of an exquisitely cast bell. Or as when, in a familiar ballet, a new dancer presents her right wrist in a position you don't remember seeing before, and that moment, if not her role or even the entire ballet, is utterly transformed. Your consciousness snaps into crystal focus, and, however briefly, you garner a glimpse of the world's hidden order.

Further Studies: The Lark in the Morning XI, 1996.

s there, in Graham's work, a struggle between the subjective and the objective? I think so. The potential perfection in his figure drawings is deliberately conserved, held in check. The viewer is conscious of an awareness that is veiling its own acuteness, not out of a lack of generosity, but out of the conviction - presented almost didactically - that that kind of seeing is not the path to take. That despite its seductiveness, an exceptionally skillful exposition of form leads nowhere beyond itself. It is the obvious difference, perhaps, between packaging and contents, between, say, the outside and the inside of a gorgeous woman, where the appearance may be flawless while the inside - brain, organs, fat layer, intestines and their contents - is the antithesis of idealized beauty yet could be said to portray something more essential to human life.

I have an image of a book stored in every one's soul. When you look at Graham's paintings, it's as if he found the book, the one you had trouble finding yourself, and he's holding it open in front of you. The pages are translucent parchment and the letters are calligraphed in gold. Now, at last, you can read the story that's been writing itself inside you from the start.

The Blackbird Suite, 1993