Vortex, 1964/65

Mazelow Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto

Gerta Moray, Harold Town, Life & Work, Art Canada Institute [online publication], Toronto, 2014, pages 31 and 62 Iris Nowell, Harold Town, Vancouver, 2014, page 103

Painted in 1964/65, Vortex holds similar imagery and lexicon as the artist's “Tyranny of the Corner” series. Using dark backgrounds broken up with coloured rings and dots—humourously dubbed doughnuts by the artist—the canvases patterning, organic line work, and contrasting bright white pigments with bold graphic shapes evoke the imagery of intricate tapestries. The geometric forms created by the patterning of the rings reference a sort of topographical landscape, broken up by the layers of the organic and geometric white forms of the composition. In Vortex, the large white starburst situated near the left edge of the artwork draws the viewers eye to edge of the canvas while the diagonals of the form direct our gaze to the corners and peripheral boundaries of the canvas. Contrary to central narrative compositional elements, or the extreme opposite of all-over abstraction, Town instead plays with the viewers perception of compositional structure and significance. In 1962, Town described his move away from the dominating central image, favouring the corners which “in most paintings are like uninvited guests at a party, uneasy and unattended. In my series... I have invited the corners to come early to the party and tried, if anything, to make all the elements of the painting that arrived later a trifle uncomfortable.” The elements of the layered and complex composition operate in a unique lexicon when merged together. There is no coherent meaning to the work, however, Town brings attention to the neglected areas of visual language and hierarchy, experimenting and commenting on the tradition of narrative compositions and abstraction in modern art.