Sold for: $29,250

PROVENANCE
Jerrold Morris Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
By descent to the present Private Estate, Toronto

Harold Town’s collage-like works employ every possible approach to laying paint down on a canvas. He stained, dripped, splattered, scrubbed, knifed and brushed on his paints. Additionally, he used a great many types of line, blocks of colour, geometric and organic forms and both opaque and translucent paint. His skill in using this diversity of approaches was making paintings like Cornucopia make sense. In works such as this, it is a question of balance. Our eye roams over the imagery, looking for something to settle on, finding a familiar shape here or there, a line that borders something nicely or cuts through it handily, a colour that defines or belies a form - complementing another incongruous colour and setting off a visual spark with yet another colour. Scrubby lines play with clean lines, layered grounds peek through in some areas, while other areas of interesting underpainting are obliterated, hinted at only by their edges. Town’s ability to make all these elements work together, to make everything somehow make sense, is why we find him so appealing and so visually right.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars