Helen Marzolf, Kenneth Lochhead: abstract paintings 1962-67, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, 1988, page 11
Dating to 1965, “Green Attachment” was completed during the height of Ken Lochhead’s career as an abstract artist. He had been painting in an entirely non-representational manner since the beginning of the decade and exhibited at the National Gallery in 1961 as a member of the Regina Five, who were considered to be at the forefront of Canada’s modern art movement. Lochhead had been participating in the Emma Lake Professional Artists’ Workshops since 1955, with guest workshop leaders including Abstract Expressionist painters and critic Clement Greenberg. The artist corresponded frequently with Greenberg during 1963-64, discussing formalism, the international art scene, and exhibition opportunities. The artist’s abstract work of the 1960s and 1970s, such as “Green Attachment”, bear resemblances to the Color-Field painting movement, which had recently established itself in New York. Along with notable post-war artists Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski and Jack Bush, Lochhead was featured in Greenberg’s 1964 influential exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction, curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and subsequently the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toronto.
During the fall of 1964, Lochhead moved to Winnipeg and embarked on a new series, characterized by an L-shape of colourful bands along the edge of the canvas. Author and curator Helen Marzolf writes that “the dynamic of these paintings relies upon the juxtaposition of the multicolored Ls with an immense stained field of color.” These canvases, which include “Green Attachment”, came to be known as the “L series”. Lochhead had abandoned the “stem configuration” of his previous series, which presented a centralized image abstract forms anchored to the bottom of the canvas. He now favoured a bold, all-over field of colour framed by lines of colour and bare canvas, as seen in the striking rectangle of green pigment, bordered to the left by an “L” of orange, red and black stripes in Green Attachment.
Marzolf goes on to praise the “L” artworks: “In this series Lochhead synthesised the hallmarks of Post-Painterly Abstraction with the particularity of his own color sense. Sober and restrained in comparison to his previous series, the colors are saturated; the effect is luminous. [...] Greenberg was especially enthusiastic about the L paintings. He suggested that Lochhead find a place to show them in New York since he thought they were ‘in a class with the best painting being done anywhere’.”
