Jack Hamilton Bush 1909 - 1977

In 1959, Bush was in a state of rapid transition. He was moving away from the turbulent painting style that through the i950s marked his considerable debt to the gestural extravagances of abstract expressionism, aspects of which permeated the thoughts and sensitivities of all the leading artists in Toronto at the time. And he was moving toward his own authentic voice as a colour field painter, with the Thrust paintings about to begin, and the Sash paintings ready to follow in only a couple of years. This strongly blocked and vigourously painted canvas stands uneasily between these two points of departure and arrival, but it also has the tension, the rawness, and the conflict that such a considerable wrench entailed.

The brutal manner in which the four colours are slapped on the canvas is consistent with the equally coarse composition itself. The tension among the geometric elements is fierce, the recession is fractured, and the colours themselves are anything but harmonious. Even the crackled effect in the green caused by a conscious decision to use varied drying times to make this happen, is consistent with the awkward and unusual character of this powerful work.  Bush used this technique from time to time in other earlier work, and it certainly has its effect here.

This is  a difficult painting, but it rewards those who spend time with it. It never settles, or softens, or gets mellow. On each viewing it presents a challenge , and it always will. One wonders if it might not, after all, have been one of Bush's favourites – a sort of orphan that he maybe loved more than his other children.

© Estate of Jack Hamilton Bush / SODRAC (2011)