PROVENANCE
Private Collection, British Columbia
By descent to the present Private Collection, British Columbia

LITERATURE
Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, the ink drawings for plates 15 & 16 reproduced page 141

This is a limited edition of sixteen black and white variations on a theme, from an edition of 250.

Please note: the full sheet size of each piece is 12 3/4 x 18 3/8 inches.

"The series Night Garden Transformations began as far back as 1973 as a single pen drawing 26 x 40 in. which I then had photo-transferred and printed as a lithograph of the same size (see plate 1). Years later, having on hand a number of copies of this black and white litho from the original drawing, I began, as I often do in afterthought about my work, to see possible variations of the theme. So, with pen and ink of the same black as the litho I began to alter the first design, obliterating parts and seeking new images in the transformed pieces that were left. My inventiveness was stimulated, and I became more and more fascinated with the re-configurations that were taking place. At intervals, when I felt a little stale about my studio paintings, I would take out one of these lithos and alter it again for yet another variation until finally I found I had done about forty of them.

I saw that they had become 'fantasies'; and the idea came to me on linking them together as parts of one larger concept. I began to think of a wild night garden where, in the magic of the dark, presences new and strange might emerge and play their delighted games of change and interchange. And I became intrigued with the showing of these changes in the process of change - a bird slowly becoming another kind of bird; a flower disappearing and emerging as a butterfly; other flowers becoming fish, birds becoming animals lurking in the grass. The night garden could be full of wonders one never encountered by daylight.

Thus, this series grew out of the transformation of existing imagery through eliminations and re-drawing. It became a game of invention and there remained only the necessity for a certain editing into transformational sequences - sequences which, of course, can be changes at will, for there is no linear logic in the series, only perhaps the surreal logic of the dream."

- Jack Shadbolt

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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