AC-78-28, 1978

Waddington Galleries, Toronto Private Collection, Ontario

Roald Nasgaard, “Abstract Painting in Canada”, Toronto, 2007, page 290 Nancy E. Dillow, “William Perehudoff: Recent Paintings’, Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 1978, page 7

During the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops held in 1962-63, William Perehudoff was introduced to Post-Painterly Abstraction by art critic Clement Greenberg and American artist Kenneth Noland. Perehudoff had a great interest in colour experimentation and sought to define his own unique style. In “Abstract Painting in Canada’, Roald Nasgaard refers to the paintings of Perehudoff as, “plays of light and dark, of transparency and opacity [as] subtle and sensuous.” Many of the artist’s wide horizontal canvases of the mid-to-late 1970s were constructed of coloured ground transversed by vibrant parallel bars of colour. “AC-78-28” contains what Nancy Dillow described as “the horizontal stretch of colour...[that] vibrates like a violin string, activating the entire canvas.” Perehudoff has said he prefers paintings ‘with a kind of pulse,’ referring to an active interplay among the elements of the picture. He elicits this pulse through variations of colour and intensity, as well as through repetitions of horizontal or vertical forms, as seen in the thin parallel bands of “AC-78-28” that give the appearance of vibration. The interplay of contrasting colours enhance the rhythm of the stripes, suggesting musical chords. While Perehudoff’s monumental canvas and his many other abstractions are constructed with strong attention to formal concerns, the viewer is often tempted to seek a literal horizon or interpret the horizontal bands as allusions to the big divisions of the natural world – earth, sky, and water. Furthermore, as Perehudoff was a native of the Canadian Prairies, his artistic vision embraced a specific response to place, showing inspiration related to the vast, open landscapes of the terrain. In 1978, when this canvas was completed, Perehudoff was at the height of his career. He participated in multiple solo exhibitions that year, namely at the Glenbow Alberta Institute in Calgary, Meredith Long Contemporary Gallery in New York, as well as both the University of Alberta Art Gallery and Banff Art Centre Gallery in Edmonton.