Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto

Note:

Ron Bloore (1925-2009) steadfastly refused to give titles to his works, or even discuss the meaning or content of his art. Instead, he prefers his paintings to directly engage the viewer without any mediation, allowing their immediate perception to determine their reaction to the piece. “The meaning of any work of art is determined entirely by the individual experiencing it,” Bloore says: what the beholder reveals is an extension of his experience in life, “not a confirmation of what he already knows.” For Bloore, painting is given revelatory power: one that is rooted in the viewer, but demanding a dialogue between lived experience and the image.

Bloore’s work from this period was characterised by an interest in experimenting with destabilising the painted surface as a two-dimensional space, seeking to play with surface and texture to create absorbing and expansive works. Here, the dashed static of soft greys and whites dominate the canvas, the paint deeply furrowed in a patchwork field of thin ridges. A strip of flat white runs along the edge, bounding in the heavily textured mottling with a moment of quiet. This conflict between balance and breakage is compounded by the monumental size of the work: the painting seems to oscillate between the stability of the rectangle and a buzz of restless movement that surges across the surface, threatening to break out of frame. Carefully stripped of colour and reference, Bloore invites us to expand our perception into a realm of infinite potential.