The Collection of the Artist
Private Collection, British Columbia
Exhibited
“Tom Forrestall: Shapes of the Paintings Interest Me as Integral Part of the Work”, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, July 13 - August 31, 1971, travelling to the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the University of Alberta, Edmonton; the Art Gallery of Windsor; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, no. 21
“Tom Forrestall”, Canadian Consulate, Paris, France, November 16 - 26, 1972, no. 16
Literature
“Tom Forrestall: Shapes of the Paintings Interest Me as an Integral Part of the Work”, exhibition catalogue, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, page 9, reproduced page 21
The 1971 exhibition catalogue for “Shapes of the Paintings Interest Me as Integral Part of the Work” refers to “The Falling Lamp” (which was featured in the exhibition's seven stops across Canada during 1971 and 1972) as being “closely related to the concept articulated in early definitions of Magic Realism. Thirty years ago the term Magic Realism was 'applied to the work of painters who by means of an exact realistic technique try to make plausible and convincing their improbable, dreamlike or fantastic visions' (Alfred H. Barr Jr., Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1942). The railway passes near the Forrestall house in Fredericton and vibration caused by it made an old kerosene lamp tumble from a shelf high in the studio one day: ‘The Falling Lamp’ derives from the experience. A substitute similar to the shattered lamp was wired in mid-air for study and the artist's daughter Monica posed for the figure. Several elements contribute to the fantastic quality in addition to the arrested motion of the closely observed object: the abstraction of the composition with its widely separated components, the unusual viewpoint directly overhead, the inverted scale relationships (exceptionally in such work, the lamp is larger than life), and the T-shaped format which opposes the vertical decent of the lamp to the horizontal plane of the floor.”
