Sold for: $1,000

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Joan Murray, Alexandra Luke: Continued Searching, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1987, page 4
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007, pages 43 and 93

While teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts in the summer of 1945, Jock MacDonald tutored Alexandra Luke in the Surrealist automatic method of painting. According to Roald Nasgaard, this is when Luke’s “real formation as an artist, having long worked in the wake of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr, began, under the tutelage of Jock Macdonald and his automatic techniques.” The fluidity of this work is certainly evocative of the Surrealists’ automatic method of painting. It also illustrates Luke’s artistic approach that “…more beauty and interest is to be found in the negative space created by the object than in the positive…painting should not stop with the already discovered beauty, but should continue searching.” This 1948 work was completed after Luke spent her first summer learning from the renowned artist and educator Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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