Man at the Fountain (23 June 2026) is a green marker drawing by Holloway, recorded in three exposures across the same night in a public park. It is Holloway's principal surviving work and the physical low point of the catalogue: a man on the ground, pulling himself toward water.
Description
The figure is drawn against and around a stone drinking fountain. The head, worked in Holloway's heavily restated line, sits at the pillar's top edge, level with the tap. The arms reach along the pillar's sides. The torso and legs trail down and away, ending in feet drawn far behind the rest of him.
A real bucket and a real drain grate share the scene. The man is drawn attending to neither. He has chosen the pillar.
The exposures
Three photographs document the work and are reproduced on this page. The earliest (01:58) is taken close, facing the head: at this angle the face fills the frame, worked over with hatched hair and a furrowed brow, and a second figure, unidentified, appears beside it. The two later exposures (03:59) step back and show the full figure at the fountain, first from distance and then nearer. All three photographs show the same drawing from different angles.
Interpretation
The work is widely read as an image of thirst, and then disputed from there. One camp holds it is about persistence: the man is one pull from the tap. Another holds it is about proximity without relief: the tap is beside his head and he is still pulling. Holloway has not clarified, and the man is in no position to.
Readers arriving from the You corpus note the contrast. You is always already where it needs to be. Holloway's man documents the other condition.
Provenance
Photographed at 01:58 and 03:59 local time. The fountain remains in working order.
