signed lower right; signed and titled on the stretcher
48 × 34 in (121.9 × 86.4 cm)
(including Buyer's Premium)
Private Collection, Toronto
Ian M. Thom and Andrew Hunter, Gordon Smith: The Act of Painting, Vancouver, 1997, see page 76 for a related painting, Blue Painting No. 2, 1959
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Toronto/Vancouver, 2008, page 136
A leading figure in post-war Canadian abstraction, Gordon Appelbe Smith rooted his artistic practice deeply in the British Columbian landscape. After immigrating from England in 1933, Smith eventually settled in Vancouver, where the coastal environment remained central to his work over several decades. Although Smith varied his approach to abstraction throughout his career, the landscape consistently served as a key source of inspiration. Drawing from natural geometries and colour harmonies, Smith developed a distinctive visual language that translates the sensory experience of the outdoors onto canvas. In "Blue Painting", Smith applies swaths of blue and yellow to evoke the sensation of ocean depths or a distant horizon. A burst of yellow in the upper right corner ignites the composition with rays of light. This vivid use of yellow cuts through the fields of blue and expressive gestural marks. While "Blue Painting" does not depict a specific natural scene, Smith anchors his use of colour in a familiar sensory experience. Through layered brushwork and tonal shifts, he conjures a sense of space and atmosphere that is rendered not through literal form, but through abstraction.
