OH, 1957

The Isaacs Gallery, Toronto Estate of Robert Noakes

James King, “Early Snow: Michael Snow 1947-1962”, Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2020, page 30

The soaring prominence of the New York-based Abstract Expressionist painters in the 1950s deeply impacted a young generation of artists in Toronto. Along with his contemporaries, Michael Snow was eager to explore the new artistic territory offered by engaging in largely spontaneous, gestural “action painting”. The Toronto art scene was evolving rapidly, with a wave of abstract painters exhibiting at the city's avant garde gallery, Greenwich Gallery (later to become The Isaacs Gallery). Snow’s approach was highly inventive and diverse, as the artist experimented with a variety of materials and methodology. With its loose but assertive blocky swathes of paint, “OH” alludes to the influence of American painter Franz Kline. The stacked, box-like forms come close to filling the pictorial space, accented with painterly drips and jagged edges. Dominated by lively cadmium orange, contrasting colours line the upper and lower edges. As an accomplished pianist who was playing in several jazz bands, Michael Snow found creative parallels between jazz and painting. Author James King observed, “Snow made the point that his interest in jazz was directly ‘related to my painting; not in the end result, but in the procedure of working out a painting. In both, one starts with a theme and through improvisation and organization on places his personal stamp on the work.’” The amusing title “OH” echoes the directness of the composition with an exclamation of enjoyment or surprise.