Additional Images

Provenance:

Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON
Michael Gibson Gallery, London, ON
Private Collection, Oakville, ON

Note:

Joan Murray writes that “McCarthy's work reiterates, in lines, textures and colours, her strategy of simple contrast. In her paintings, powerful shapes generate a stimulating mix of aesthetic energies. Her forté lies in the Midas-like transformation of ordinary worlds into shining visions.”[1]

Painted by McCarthy at the age of 95, this vista was made with great economy of vision. The Stream from the Foothills displays the assuredness of a life spent at the easel, the brushstrokes spare yet, as is typical for the artist, highly evocative of place. Her strong design sense is also at play, with the landscape condensed to its most elemental forms. This is a straightforward work, a direct representation of something – a spontaneity which McCarthy chased throughout her career. Per Stuart Reid, “painting for McCarthy is a game of give and take, back and forth – a sustained rally between the artist and the work, lingering somewhere between suggestion and definition.”[2]

[1] Joan Murray in Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy (Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999), 72.
[2] Stuart Reid, “Island Sketches” in Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy, (Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999), 212.