Dennis Reid, “A Concise History of Canadian Painting”, third edition, Toronto, 2012, page 375
Peter Mellen, “Landmarks of Canadian Art”, Toronto, 1978, page 240
Roald Nasgaard, “Abstract Painting in Canada”, Toronto/Vancouver, 2007, page 244
David Burnett, “Iskowitz”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1982, page 72
Iskowitz’s paintings of the 1970s and 80s are comprised of magnificent vivid shapes in contrasting tones, scattered upon laboriously painted surfaces. Dennis Reid describes the artist’s process: “Iskowitz worked only at night under artificial light, in oils...He would build up a picture slowly, applying a colour, then when it had dried, applying another over it, leaving only parts of the previous layers exposed, thinly veiling others, or obscuring some parts entirely...”
Iskowitz drew on his personal recollections of experiences with landscape for his work, explaining that he would take “...the experience, out in the field, of looking up in the trees or in the sky, of looking down from the height of a helicopter. So what you try to do is make a composition of all those things, make some kind of reality... That’s painting.” The Canadian landscape provided him with striking patterns and vistas which emerged through tiers of scattered clouds below.
Nasgaard writes that, by the 1980s, Iskowitz had “upped the ante by electrifying his colours, intensifying their contrasts and hardening the contours of his forms.” “Painting A” exemplifies the artist’s unique manipulation of colour harmonies, textures and patterns, revealing the moment when “the landscape, the imagination, and the memory of experiences are united...”
