Jack Bush (photo courtesy Heffel Fine Art)
I am gratified that the late Canadian artist Jack Bush is receiving the attention that he so well deserves. I am so grateful for the opportunity that he gave me to open the door to modern contemporary art of that time.
Jack's work is an important advance on the traditional landscape images deriving from the work of the Group of Seven. In a conversation with A. Y. Jackson in a boathouse on Georgian Bay in 1966, Jackson told me that the group had no recognition from the public early on and that my generation of artists had it much easier than they had.
I thought about that and later when I had the chance to assist Jack because of his aneurism, I realized that being a painter was — and is — still a tough row to hoe.
The paintings coming out of the US during the 1960s were big, bright and in your face. Jack reacted to this and started to stop his easel paintings, creating large wall-size colourful paintings instead. They commanded attention and brought some notoriety in the '60s. That is when I became Jack's first full-time studio assistant, from the fall of 1969 to the fall of 1970.
Jack had just returned from a trip to Ireland and was taken with the painted lines on the public roads there, so he painted a series using a white line on a flat background. He started to vary the backgrounds of his work. He enlarged his scale — and he used acrylic straight out of the tube.
I worked with him Monday through Friday from 10 am to around 2 pm. Then we went to lunch, relaxed and reviewed what came of that day's efforts. He sketched on white paper napkins and struggled over titles.
Jack Hamilton Bush, “Strawberry,” 1970 acrylic polymer emulsion on canvas, 68 1/8" x 91 1/8" (sold at Heffel Fine Art for $691,250)
The painting Strawberry came from a milkshake that I was drinking from a fountain glass. The orange rectangle on the left side of that painting stymied us until I mentioned the colour pumpkin. It was done. The painting had a name. (That painting was sold by Heffel at auction in 2018 for $691,250.)
There were so many activities throughout that year. Jack was visited by artists, critics and writers.
Production continued and when the paintings were finished, they were rolled up on 12-inch tubes and set aside until a show occurred. Then they were sent to, say, New York, Boston or London for exhibition. A carpenter in New York built the stretcher bars and used a moveable metal corner clamp to keep the canvas taut.
That experience cinched my determination to do art. I had completed four years of art classes at the New School of Art in Toronto, from 1965 to 1969 and I wanted a degree, so I told Jack that I would be moving out west. He offered me two choices on my last day: a print or a hundred dollars. The latter was enough to get me to the school I was accepted to. But that ended my work with Jack.
We corresponded after that. Carlos Villa, a San Francisco artist, extended an invitation for Jack to be a visiting artist at my school. I was excited and wrote to Jack, but he was too busy with just doing the work for upcoming exhibitions and was understandably unable to accept that invitation.
I consider Jack's paintings to be absolutely ravishing in the sense of powerful colour. They are so able to stimulate the eye in a physiological sense — a perception of immediacy and an optical revelation.
He was a warm, kind and humble person, in spite of all the pressure he felt from both inside and outside. He maintained a balance that carried him far.
I have always felt privileged to have had the opportunity to work with Jack. ■
Also see: Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné
Colour, Form And Attitude: The trailblazing abstracts of Jack Bush
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