M.G.T. #4, circa 1970

Marlborough-Godard Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto & Israel By descent to the present Private Collection, Israel

Ian M. Thom and Andrew Hunter, “Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting”, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1997, page 41

A restless experimenter, Gordon Smith mastered a number of distinct painterly approaches from landscape to gestural to hard-edge abstract works. In the late sixties and early seventies, the artist produced visually striking screenprints which aptly demonstrated his strong interest in highly structured, geometric abstraction. In painting, the artist remained open to multiple influences, but struggled to commit to an artistic trajectory which could sustain his interest. Smith travelled extensively in 1970-71, collaborating with Arthur Erickson on the Canadian pavilion design at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan. This project was followed by trips to Egypt, the U.S. and England. Returning home to British Columbia, Smith began to develop a new breakthrough body of work. The “Seawall” series proved to be a successful synthesis of his earlier work, incorporating qualities of both landscape and abstraction. With a compositional structure reduced to a simple series of horizontal bands, “M.G.T. #4” breaks open the modernist grid to allow for an ocean vista with a profound feeling of depth and space. The subdued palette captures the often grey, cloudy views of the Pacific coast. With sensitive brushwork, Smith describes the subtleties of light and gentle movement playing on the water’s surface. Critic and writer Ian Thom noted, “Smith’s paintings are deceptively simple: their horizontal bands of colour, which blend into each other, both connect to and remove themselves from the landscape itself. They are nature at the point of dissolution into abstraction.”