Sold for: $49,250

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the Artist by Dr. William and Mona Goldman, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Ian M. Thom and Andrew Hunter, Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1997, listed page 156

EXHIBITED
Vancouver Art Gallery, Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting, 1997

As in Emily Carr’s 1931 painting Big Raven, Gordon Smith’s raven dominates the picture plane. An important figure in Northwest Coast First Nations mythology, Raven is seen as mischievous and curious, a magician who was an active participant in the transformation of the world. In the natural world, the raven is a strong and crafty bird—intelligent and playful. Smith communicates this in the raven’s confident stance and through its large and penetrating eye, expressive of its acute powers of observation. The abstracted background is typical of Smith’s work in the 1950s. In 1951 he made a trip to San Francisco to take classes at the California School of Fine Arts, and while there, he was influenced by the work of American Abstract Expressionists. In The Raven, the central paler configuration of planes of orange, grey and ochre serves to emphasize and spatially push forward the dark figure of the bird. The treatment of paint is also important; the brushwork is textural and boldly rough, which further expresses the life force of his subject, the bold trickster of legend and real life.

On verso is an unfinished abstract painting.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars