Jack Hamilton Bush 1909 - 1977

Bush's transition from a traditional landscape painter tagging along on the coat tails of the Group of Seven, as so many of his generation did in the Depression years and through the war years, to a dynamic abstract painter, was a slowly staged progression. He flirted with this idea and that and tried one technique and then another, before he emerged as the artist we think of today.

His journey was fraught with trial and error, since Bush had to re-educate his imagination and find in himself the authentic impulse to create what was truly his and only his. The exploration took him along a number of paths that produced fascinating and beautiful works, but in the end did not prove to be the destination he was looking for.

This painting is one of these markers along the way: a fine work, distinctly Bush's own, and one that points to the painter that Bush was on the verge of becoming.