Fry’s Purple Study series is a continuation of his Drawing Room Study works; however, in these newer pieces he was thinking about figuration and painting in different ways. The colour purple is deeply significant for Fry: it is loaded with symbolic association to mysticism, ritual and loss, and is technically one of the most difficult hues to work with because of its instability. In Purple Study 2 his canvas is like a cavernous space engulfing two figure-forms. Their presence is more a tactile expression than a visual motif; they are drawn with primal and urgent gestures, as if scratched or carved into the velvety surface. Their abstraction is pushed to its limit: the figures become almost lost, a mere suggestion in the mind of the spectator.