Night on the River, 1987

Private Collection, Newfoundland and Labrador

Tom Smart, “Christopher Pratt: Six Decades”, Richmond Hill, 2013, illustrated page 89

Discussing Christopher Pratt's work of the late 1980s, Tom Smart remarks that the artist “introduced and explored the theme of movement, particularly driving. This resulted in his choosing views as if seen from the front seat of an automobile, or describing scenery that can be seen only from behind the steering wheel. For Pratt, 'few things are as time-out-of-life as driving – it is my way of avoiding things, of being neither here nor there. Sometimes I think I could drive forever.' His 1987 silkscreen ‘Night on the River’, a nocturnal landscape, is a memory trace of a long, private January drive during which he stopped to listen to the water ripping under a bridge at Beaver Ridge (the place where he caught his first Atlantic salmon as an eight year old) as it coursed towards a waterfall further downstream.” A print from the edition of “Night on the River” can be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.