PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape, A Retrospective Exhibition, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981, page 167

Jock Macdonald worked in two directions in his oeuvre—landscape and abstraction—although as time progressed, abstraction dominated. His first abstractions, which he called “modalities,” emerged in the mid-1930s and were extrapolated from natural forms. In the mid-1940s through 1950, he was working in a surrealist style, accessing his unconscious through the process of automatism, and using complicated patterning and biomorphic form. By the early 1950s, Macdonald was again transforming and searching for a new freedom. He moved to Toronto and became a member of Painters Eleven, a group of abstract painters who formed in 1953, declaring, “There is none so alive, creatively forceful or as talented as the members of Painters XI.” In By the Sea we still see recognizable elements, such as the hand reaching from the form on the right, but the work is primarily about colour and two-dimensional space. Dynamic and playful, its black abstracted figures float at the surface over flat, brilliant planes of colour, with areas of white creating light. By the Sea is an outstanding work from this pioneer of automatic and abstract painting in Canada.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars