BCSFA CGP CPE OC RCA
1919 - 2020
Canadian
WF a
mixed media on paper
signed and on verso titled on a label and dated 2005
21 x 30 in, 53.3 x 76.2 cm
Estimate: $8,000 - $12,000 CAD
Sold for: $10,530
Preview at: Heffel Vancouver
PROVENANCE
Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
Private Collection, Vancouver
LITERATURE
Robert Enright, Gordon Smith: Entanglements, Equinox Gallery, 2012, page 5
To this important West Coast modernist, paint and the quality of the surface itself is as important as the natural scene he is depicting. In WF a, Gordon Smith makes us aware of the space below the surface – the presence of the growth under the blanket of snow. He insinuates what lies beneath by letting the green bleed up in soft smudges – suggestions of mosses, grasses and ground cover. The bare branches in the foreground reflect his attraction to certain patterns; as he stated, “I’ve always loved tangles, that crossing over of things.” WF a adeptly recreates Smith’s experience in the landscape through its painterly surface of dark marks and lines against a luscious snow surface glowing with delicate colour tones. As Robert Enright points out, “over the course of his 75 year long career he has made paintings employing that procedure of looping and overlapping, the movement of line into line, texture into texture and colour into colour. Painting is the trace of the inside of his head to the outside world, using nature as the subject of that complicated disentanglement.”
Estimate: $8,000 - $12,000 CAD
All prices are in Canadian Dollars
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