Gordon Appelbe Smith

Despite being born in the United Kingdom, Gordon Appelbe Smith became a master at distilling the essence of the Canadian landscape within his paintings.

Arriving in Winnipeg as a teenager in 1933, Smith pursued studies at the Vancouver School of Art. His earliest works and exhibitions were comprised of landscape paintings; however, seeing the abstract paintings of American artists Clyfford Still and Richard Diebenkorn when attending the California School of Fine Arts in the early-50s significantly shaped Smith’s future painting practice.[1]

Primarily considered an abstract artist throughout the 50s, Smith intentionally based his paintings on real-life subject matter, such as the latticework of intertwined tree branches or the grid of a cityscape, as a means of giving an underlying structure to his compositions. Always in tune with the art of his time, Smith pursued a harder-edge form of Colour Field-based abstraction in the 1960s; however, when he resumed landscape painting in the 1970s, it was immediately apparent to critics that he hadn’t lost his passion for it, calling Smith’s work at this time “witty,” “spritely,” and “lyrical.”[2]

Smith remained dedicated to interpreting Canada’s west coast landscape for the rest of his life. The impressionistic forest scene depicted in Feb. 15, 1990 is a marvelous example of the artist’s unwavering skill at balancing painterly dynamism and compositional control. A spontaneous energy animates the brushstrokes delineating the trees and branches, and the juxtaposition of electric blues, acid greens, and burnt oranges conveys chromatic daring. White spaces throughout the painting can be interpreted as snow, making it a northern or winter scene; however, with these open spaces the artist purposefully provides the composition with room to breathe and gives viewers areas on which they can pause and refresh their eyes before continuing their exploration of this canvas’s richly detailed surface.

[1] Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre; Halifax: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia) 2007, 134.
[2] Ibid., 136.