A wedge-like torso seen from the patient’s point of view leads the viewer abruptly into the picture plane, while at the same time giving a sense of dislocation. This feeling is all the more acute because of the absence of the patient’s head. What lies beyond the feet varies from picture to picture: empty space, flowers, the artist’s mother, a window, doctors, friends, ocean. The patient’s pyjamas and the wrinkled sheets on the bed are crucial additions to the earlier sketches (made in 1986 at St. Margaret’s Hospital) of the artist’s feet, adding a greater sense of realism and location to this very ghost-like form. There is something eerie in the way the artist sees himself as if detached from his own body. This combination of realism with a dream-like or ghost-like dimension is the very essence of magical realism. The shaded lines suggest the contours of a weathered landscape, a landscape the patient is becoming part of through long inertia. This patient torso motif is used in the paintings Visitors, Mountain and Mother and Son.