Oasis is a desert landscape which creates a sensuous connection to the land. Sand dunes and hills form an undulating and faceted backdrop, punctuated with light and shade creating folds in the landscape. On a smooth, flat, plateau in the foreground, the edge of which softly curves, an enigmatic female figure emerges from the ground which opens like a peach, shell or vulva as if the earth is giving birth to the figure. It is as if the defined figure is moulded and morphed from the desert itself, with rounded stylised arms, torso and head; she is connected to the earth from a point inside the opening structure and emerges like a genie from bottle, seeming to ooze and glide seductively onto the surface. She has one arm raised above her as if in rapture and her breasts spill out to the side. At the foot of the figure lies a pink branch from which sprout two lime-green stylised leaves on thin branches which are like arms from which wave playful hands.

Oasis conveys a similar sensual and sexual ambiguous imagery and energy as some of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings. The image is reminiscent of the hills in her New Mexico landscapes – a landscape that Orlik must have visited during his time in Los Angeles. However, Oasis was painted in 1974 and was shown at Acoris, the London Surrealist Art Centre, in their Surrealist Masters 1974exhibition (catalogue no. 50) and so his desert scene must have sprung from his imagination. The desert is a setting that he returns to in many of his paintings.