For the works seen here, Clough created a crude machine he called “the big finger,” which is a wooden pole with a round pad on one end. As this apparatus moves across the canvas it creates gestural marks. It is important to the artist that the mechanical device distances the work from the artist’s actual hand. This method of creating the painting also distances the artist from the romantic ideas associated with the act of painting, held by painters through much of the twentieth century. Although Clough’s painterly abstractions appear to be an affirmation of the power of abstract painting to express truth and emotion, his techniques belie that idea.