Lot 66
JACK LEONARD SHADBOLT, R.C.A.
Additional Images
Provenance:
Bau-Xi Gallery Ltd., Vancouver
Equinox Gallery., Vancouver
Private Collection, Vancouver
Literature:
Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver & Toronto, 1990. p 204.
Note:
In Dark Land, a smouldering field is built up over a red ground, providing a dripping backdrop for teetering striped towers. Smoke seems to billow out of the multicoloured pillars. A haze of hyper-saturated purple wavers across the top of the canvas, enclosing around the shuddering totems.
This isn’t a landscape necessarily - more a psychic impression, a smudge on the subconscious constructed out of holistic memory and mirrored experience. Jack Shadbolt's (1909-1998) paintings of this time were mining the past, borne out from “a private mythology… built from multicultural references and images from his own past production.”
On the verso, red paint is thickly worked in a rough background; it’s unclear if this is a continuation of the dream sequence or a separate, unfinished work.