Page 51 - Studio International - July August 1974

(Below top) K. M. Graham (Below bottom) Daniel Solomon (Below) Jack Bush
Celebration 1972 Lucaya no. 41973 Temple 1972
Acrylic on canvas, 521 x 76 in. Acrylic on canvas, 41 x 55 M. Acrylic on canvas, 75 x 64 in.
The Pollock Gallery, Toronto Photo :Lyle Wachovsky Photo : Karol Ike
The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto

II
Bush's art will always be inherently difficult
partly because it juxtaposes features from two
disparate traditions, namely, Ontarian landscape
painting before the fifties and, in the following
decade, abstract painting in New York.
Moreover, the development out of both
traditions maintains something of the flavour of
fifties and early sixties decorative and
commercial art.4 Thus it's startling to see
contemporary pictures in Toronto that have
much in common with all three of these
influences.
In her early sixties, Kay Graham's vision
shares something of the period style that
flavours Bush's art, and yet I shouldn't hesitate
to call her a younger painter. She began working
seriously about seven years ago and shows every
sign of developing her art more definitively.
Also, you cannot call Graham a regional artist
without some qualification of what the term
means for Toronto. She is regional in the sense
that her work, more explicitly than any other
produced in Toronto fuses the contradiction
which constitutes regional, Ontarian style. And
it is this I take to be one of the most interesting
features of Graham's painting in particular, and
Toronto art in general. It is and it is not a
regional art, either more or less.
For Graham the Ontarian landscape has
formed much of her subject matter, in effect
nature, sometimes even with the texture of say this much though, the lesson of Bush's enlarging the vein in which the Canadian
nature, do not get as good as pictures that colour seems to be that a quality of colour David Milne worked. But painting after nature
introduce very clearly arbitrary colouristic closely related to painting after nature can at large describes it better. Drawings and works
devices such as paired complementaries or successfully be conserved within the cubist on paper wandering as far afield as the Canadian
grouped primaries (both pictures reproduced tradition, just as Matisse did, much more viably Arctic demonstrate that simply in terms of
here do this). But this involves talking about than might have been thought possible for fully subject matter her work is not strictly regional.
degrees of abstractness (and with Bush the abstract art before him. Moreover, this lesson is Likewise, Graham's methods derive largely
question looks entirely like one of degrees, not best learned from his highly innovative painting from abstract painting in New York during the
of kinds of pictures) and a writer would find of the past few years, that so successfully retains sixties, from Frankenthaler and Louis especially.
himself lost in solipsism if he pursued it. If I can high contrast drawing. This blend of painting after nature with

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