Jack Bush
Toronto commercial artist by day, Painters Eleven by night, then Colour Field by conviction.
Jack Bush was born in Toronto in 1909 and worked for most of his life as a commercial artist, painting seriously in the evenings and at weekends. He was a founder of Painters Eleven, the group that brought abstraction to Ontario in 1953, and a studio visit from the critic Clement Greenberg in 1957 changed his direction: he thinned the paint, abandoned the gestural surface and moved towards flat, staining colour on raw canvas. The mature work, from about 1960, is the sash and column paintings and then the loose, singing colour arrangements of the 1970s. He gave up commercial work only in 1968, and died in 1977.
Bush is principally a Canadian market, though the Colour Field connection gives the strongest work an international reach. The stained canvases on raw cotton duck are the top of the output; the earlier Painters Eleven period is a smaller and more specialist field. Because the paint is thin and much of the canvas is left bare, staining, discolouration of the unprimed ground and old restoration are especially visible and bear directly on value. Watercolours and gouaches on paper are numerous. Signature, title and date are usually on the reverse.
If you own a work by Jack Bush
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