Additional Images

Provenance:

Roberts Gallery Limited, Toronto

Literature:

Ian G. Lumsden, Douglas Scott Richardson, Tom and Natalie Forrestall, Shapes of the paintings interest me as an integral part of the work, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, 1971, page 3.

Tom Smart, Tom Forrestall: Paintings, Drawings, Writings, Key Porter Books, Toronto, 2008, page 61 for a closely related work entitled Preparation for the Pig, 1969, reproduced in colour.

Note:

In a style sometimes classified as Magic Realism, Tom Forrestall documents space, light & shade, and subjects like a historian. The content and contours of Forrestall’s shaped panels heighten the viewer’s response through their intrinsic blending of composition and emotion. As Ian Lumsden states, “Shape is all-important and unimportant to Tom Forrestall. The shapes of things inside the panels are what matter: these are the forms that embody meaning. But the shaping of the panel relates to the shape of things. Sometimes the subject precedes the shape, and the panel is fashioned to suit the painting; sometimes the subject of the painting is found to suit the shape of the panel already on hand.”