The Veil (after René Magritte’s The Lovers) is a pen and ink drawing composed of hundreds of thousands of numerals, each written by hand. Beginning with a zero and a decimal point, the sequence extends through approximately 800,000 zeros, followed by a single numeral 1, and continues beyond with more zeros. The resulting number is infinitesimally close to zero.

The work takes its reference from René Magritte’s paintings The Lovers, in which two figures are veiled, their faces obscured by cloth even as they draw close. In The Veil, the drawing becomes the veil itself: a measure of distance that is almost nothing, yet cannot be crossed. Through the repetition of zeros, this space is extended across the surface—at once intimate and unreachable, existing simultaneously at a subatomic and cosmic scale.

Australian poet Carol Jenkins writes:

“The Veil deals concisely with the antique problem of art: the depiction of space, and the tension that exists between figures in a scene by the simple reiteration of zeros and the finely calibrated distance between each zero. Where the work lifts is in the synergy of the zeros. They shimmer on the paper – and in this embodied moiré pulse that seems to make the work float off the page, a sleight of hand that creates an illusion of three dimensions.” (Read Carol Jenkins’ full essay here).