Gordon Smith | New Paintings

This exhibition is a return to the artist’s ongoing fascination with the landscape as it has changed over a lifetime of painting. A landscape painter for all seasons, this new exhibition highlights the artist’s agility in balancing gesture and line, intention and chance.

There is a mystical charge in the intensity of Gordon Smith lines. Approaching Automatism, an almost unconscious access to the landscape emerges, synthesized from over 70 years of knowledge, influence, and working with paint. The landscapes in these new paintings seem to resist the laws of physics, twisting and shifting the horizon line inside the convergence of entangled branches and twigs. Despite the density of these landscapes, they have become neither impenetrable nor heavy, but rather remain resolutely light and spirited, much like the hand who painted them.

About Gordon Smith:

Born in 1919 in East Brighton, England, Gordon Smith he has worked continuously to expand the dialogue between abstraction and representation. Smith emigrated to Canada in 1933 where he attended the Winnipeg School of Art. Upon his return from fighting in WWII, he settled with his wife Marion in Vancouver, and graduated from the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design). His many major achievements include the creation of the Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation (2002), Order of Canada (1996), Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2007), and the Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts (2009). Gordon Smith’s work is included in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Mr. Smith’s work is also featured at the High Commission of Canada (Canada House) at Trafalgar Square in London, UK. Gordon Smith lives and works in West Vancouver, BC.