Sold for: $10,000

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: Life & Work, Art Canada Institute, page 56

Jock Macdonald, a visionary painter and dedicated art educator, sought to convey the natural world and its spiritual elements within his works. Throughout his career, Macdonald engaged with a range of practicing artists and theorists and was continually inspired to develop a unique mode of expression. His early infatuation with the Canadian landscape was sparked by his association with Frederick Varley, while his interest in unconscious or “automatic” expression was fostered by Surrealist mentors such as Grace Pailthorpe. However, once Macdonald joined Painters Eleven in 1953, his passion for abstraction and the confidence to experiment with fluid forms and new media flourished. As a beloved art teacher, Macdonald championed the creation of abstract painting in Canada and encouraged his students to engage with current aesthetic, mathematical and scientific theories and above all, the natural world. Macdonald staunchly believed in art’s potential to connect with aspects of nature, time, and spiritual consciousness. In his lecture “Art in Relation to Nature” at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1940, Macdonald summarizes his belief that art “is trying to tell us something, something about nature, something about the universe, and something about life…the artist no longer strives to imitate the exact appearance of nature but, rather, to express the spirit therein.”

Macdonald’s interests in the spiritual, the natural, and the scientific converge in this 1959 work, “Willow - the Wisp.” A Willow the wisp, or will-o’-the-wisp, is a folkloric sprite, or ghostly light which lured travellers into forests, marshlands or bogs. This diaphanous light is also a natural phenomenon caused by organic decay and the release of natural gases. A will-o’-the-wisp relates to a sense of longing and being entranced by the mysterious natural world. However, rather than portray the wisps as ethereal and elusive beings, his alabaster wisps are tactile and structural, lending them a sense of permanence and monumentality. Macdonald’s composition suspends his wisp forms within an abstracted landscape of mossy greens and soft crimson, elevating their status in the natural world to stoic beacons of both spirit and science. By evoking this imagery, Macdonald references his life-long quest to locate the spiritual within nature and to find a unique stylistic modality to express it.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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