Curator: Sarah Stanners. Presented in Partnership with Esker Foundation, Calgary

The Ontario premiere of Jack Bush: In Studio at the McMichael will be the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in a major public gallery in the vicinity of Toronto since the early 1980s. In the most classic sense, the word studio is defined as “room for study.” This exhibition was conceived as an opportunity to gather 20 select paintings in a new space with the aim to spark study.

Fifteen of the paintings in show were made in a small one-room studio in Bush’s family home in North Toronto. In 1968, after 41 years of working in commercial art studios, and nearly a lifetime of painting at home, a fellow artist offered Bush studio space in downtown Toronto. The remaining five works in the exhibition were painted there, where he would execute most of his very large paintings from 1968 until his death in January 1977.

The most intimate conversations held in the studio were between Jack and his primary subject: colour. The studio was a sounding board for the artist; a place to face dead ends and challenges; a place to test colour and make it sing; a place to both putter and make grand statements; and, most of all, a place to be absorbed in art.