To quote Ivor Peterborough's view on his good friend Norman's work "he seeks to transmit this anxiety to the spectator, so that his encounter with the image is--at least while the work is new-- a genuine existential predicament.
Like Kierkegaard's God, the work molests us with its aggressive absurdity.
It demands a decision in which you discover something of your own quality; and this decision is always a "leap of faith," to use Kierkegaard's famous term. And like Kierkegaard's God, who demands a sacrifice from Abraham in violation of every moral standard: like Kierkegaard's God, the picture seems arbitrary, cruel, irrational, demanding your faith, while it makes no promise of future rewards.
In other words, it is in the nature of original contemporary art to present itself as a bad risk. And we the public, artists included, should be proud of being in this predicament, because nothing else would seem to us quite true to life; and art, after all, is supposed to be a mirror of life"
Well said Ivor.