Tangled Trees, 1947

Collection of the artist Theo Waddington Inc., Montreal Jack Bush Art Estate Private Collection, Toronto

“Jack Bush: Watercolours”, Theo Waddington Gallery, Montreal, 1980 “Jack Bush, RCA”, Masters Gallery, Calgary, 1982, no. 15

Masters Gallery, “Jack Bush, RCA”, exhibition catalogue, 1982, not paginated, cat. no. 15 Dennis Reid, “Jack Bush: The Development of a Canadian Painter”, in Karen Wilkin (ed.), Jack Bush, Toronto, 1984, pages 8, 13 and 15

As a young man and burgeoning commercial artist, Jack Bush began studying in Montreal where he apprenticed for Rapid Grip, before he returned to Toronto in 1929 to work for the company’s Toronto branch. Bush developed a keen sense for bold design and a knack for efficient production in both his own professional and personal artistic work. Upon returning to Toronto, Bush enrolled in evening classes and sketching clubs targeted to commercial artists. Members organized evening and weekend sketching gatherings to develop their practices and build a community. During this time, the Group of Seven was still the dominant voice in Canadian art. For a young artist, Bush naturally sought inspiration and emulated many of the styles and techniques of the National School. Indeed, we can see the ragged chaos of the landscape and apt use of bold colour in “Tangled Trees”, not dissimilar to that of Arthur Lismer and Frederick Varley. Dennis Reid states that “the national landscape at the outbreak of war still exercised an unrelenting hold upon the bulk of the painters of Toronto, [Charles] Comfort and Bush included.” While the landscape was still a dominant source of inspiration and subject matter for artist’s in the post-war period, “Tangled Trees” serves as an excellent example of Bush’s development into abstraction, acting as an insightful token of what was to come for the artist. Compared to his mature abstract works, “Tangled Trees”, painted in 1947 at Cameron Lake, exhibits “his familiar high-keyed yet saturated, just-off-primary colours; mustard, dusty pink, light blue, with blue-greens and browns, always accented with flashes of brilliant white and contrasting black shadows.” Form, flow and independent compositional elements are still paramount in these early works for the artist. Not purely abstract, the seeds of Bush’s abstract development are conveyed in “Tangled Trees”, particularly in the use of strokes of colour as vehicles for delineation of singular form. The landscape has been abstracted to a degree, mounds and rock forms exaggerated and tree forms simplified, all punctuated with bold contrasting colour, exemplifying the experimental and transitional period of artistic development Bush was experiencing at the time. “Tangled Trees” is the painting Jack Bush chose to submit to the Canadian Group of Painters in November 1947, to be considered for his membership in the collective. Bush’s submission was accepted, and he successfully became a member of the group soon after, in 1948. This artwork will be included in the forthcoming “Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné” by Dr. Sarah Stanners.