The present work represents Patrick Heron's mature exploration of colour relationships and abstract form. Created in the same year as his influential lecture, 'The Shape of Colour,' it embodies Heron's fundamental belief that "colour is both the subject and the means, the form and the content, the image and the meaning" in painting.

The work belongs to a significant period in Heron's career when he had fully developed his "wobbly hard-edge" technique. It demonstrates how Heron successfully translated his painterly concerns into the print medium, achieving the clean lines and flattened forms that characterised his work of this era.

The timing of this piece is particularly significant as it coincides with Heron's theoretical articulations about colour and shape being inseparable elements. In his 1973 lecture, 'The Shape of Colour,' Heron argued that "there is no shape that is not conveyed to you by colour, and there is no colour that can present itself to you without involving shape." This artwork successfully conveys these principles, as each colour field inherently defines spatial relationships within the composition.

The work represents Heron's distinctive contribution to post-war British abstraction. It shows his ability to create visual sensations through pure colour relationships while maintaining connections to the European modernist tradition. Like his paintings from this period, this artwork demonstrates Heron's commitment to making all areas of the composition equally important, a principle he had absorbed from his study of Matisse.

'January 1973: 8' is a crucial example of how Heron's theoretical ideas about colour and form found practical expression in his art. It bridges the gap between his roles as an artist and critic in developing British modernism.