Dick Watkins’s colourful, jazz-inflected The Mooche 1968 was arguably the most lyrical painting included in the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark 1968 exhibition ‘The Field’. The jostling push–pull of positive and negative space, created with a richly coloured mix of simple, yet open, geometric forms (triangles, squares, trapezoids and circles), epitomises the formal innovation and artistic experimentation of the era. Its lozenge-shaped canvas heightens the rhythmic quality of the composition, and conveys a sense of musicality that has rarely been matched in the history of Australian painting.