J.W.G. (Jock) Macdonald, RCA: Early Watercolours

×

Expand

J.W.G. (Jock) Macdonald, RCA, "Untitled," 1950

watercolour on paper, 10.5" x 13.5"

J.W.G. (Jock) Macdonald was born in 1897 in Scotland, and attended school at the Edinburgh College of Art. He worked as a designer and was recruited to be a professor at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts in 1926. He was influential on the Vancouver art scene and has come to be well collected across the country.

Macdonald had a fulfilling artistic career with more than one distinct style achieving recognizable success. However perhaps one of the most individualistic and thoughtful of his oeuvre was the automatic works on paper from the 1940s. They burst with colour and biomorphic fantastical details. Macdonald was heavily influenced by the scientific and psychological theories associated with British Surrealism. British Surrealist’s Dr. Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff introduced their surrealism to Vancouver in a series of lectures and exhibitions organized by Lawren Harris and the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1944. Macdonald took up a mentoring friendship with Pailthorpe and Mednikoff immediately. For years he embarked upon automatic surrealism differing from any other Vancouver, and even Canadian, at the time.

This collection of biomorphic works on paper has been tenderly amassed over time and represents fine examples of this stage in Macdonald’s career. One work with slightly different composition, dating to 1942, shows that the was already leaning towards this venture before meeting the British surrealists in person, and another dated 1950 shows that he was captivated with working in this manner for a full half decade.