Jack Hamilton Bush 1909 - 1977

Estate of the artist

Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto

Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York

New Zones Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York

Terry Fenton, Jack Bush, A Retrospective, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1976, section V, unpaginated

This work is in very good condition. There are minor scuffs to the corners of the canvas which are currently exposed in the floating frame, as well as other small scuffs across the bottom.
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Bush was not the first Canadian to have established an international reputation, but was one of the very few who did so without leaving Canada for an extended period.

For many years, Bush and other artists felt isolated in what they were painting due to the strength of the Group of Seven and Toronto's provincialism.  It took many years before Bush and his fellow artists formed the Painters Eleven in 1953.  They were aware of advances in art in New York and Europe and were already delving into Cubism and Abstract Expressionism in their paintings.

Bush was aligning drawn shapes within the confines of the rectangular shape of the frame and placing these forms into some kind of pictorial design which broke with the traditional view of how paintings were organized.  A visit from the noted American art critic, Clement Greenberg, served as the catalyst to propel him to greater efforts.

Moonflight is an example of one of Bush's "Thrust" paintings done between 1960 and 1961.  Terry Fenton notes:

In the "Thrust" pictures of 1960 and 1961, Bush's unique, artistic personality became even more evident.  A drawn shape, ressembling a brushstroke, would enter from one side of these pictures, come about two-thirds of the way across and stop at a drawn burst or splatter shape rendered in a different colour or colours.  This shape was frequently left unpainted and was drawn 'awkwardly' - not trued and faired - to slow its movement.