Jack Bush

Jack Bush

I met Jack Bush a couple of times a week over about 6 weeks before i knew who he was.

In 1965 I was rejected by the OCA, I knew I was an Artist so I read that Artists hung out at the Pilot so I went there and sat at the bar. (mostly too early in the day because of my shift.)So there is a dapper little man in a quiet suit with steel gray hair and neatly trimmed moustache sitting beside me drinking Martinis. We struck up a conversation which rose to a level I wasn't used to. this guy had amazing insights into art etc and I really enjoyed talking to him. I ran into him several times and always had an enjoyable conversation.

It took me a couple of weeks to find out that the artists hung out in the big dark back room and rareley came in before 5pm.

It took me a while to break into the Artist clique in the back. I became friends with Jerry Santbergen who was a bit of an outsider himself at that time.

Jerry and I went into  the Pilot for lunch one day and I passed my friend on the barstool. I said Hi and he said" I see you found some artists." We went up to the back and Jerry said"Wow you know Jack Bush" He is a pretty good artist.

I didn't even know. Anyway, I became a good friend of Jack and we always talked at parties and openings besides the Pilot. He always invited me to his openings and he always had a lot of time for me and was a joy to talk to.

"I don't look for anything. It comes to me. I may be walking along a road and I see a mark on the road; it looks interesting, so I try it out as a painting. Or looking at some flowers in the garden - how can I get the feel of those colours, of the flower colours, the nice smell and everything? ... I'm not painting flowers. I'm painting the essence, the feeling to me only, not how somebody else feels about those flowers, only me. Then I forget the flowers and make a good painting of it if I can."

Jack Bush, 1977

Jack Bush is best known for his abstract paintings done between the 1950s and 1970s. He represented Canada at the 1967 São Paulo Bienal and the Art Gallery of Ontario toured a large retrospective exhibition of his work in 1976. Bush created advertisements and illustrations for 42 years before devoting himself full-time to painting in 1968.

As a young man in Toronto in the 1930s, Bush ran a commercial art business and took night classes at the Ontario College of Art. During this period he had very little exposure to modern European art, and, like most other Toronto painters at the time, was primarily influenced by the Group of Seven. The decorative designs and areas of flat colour of Toronto-based artist and designer Charles Comfort also influenced Bush's early painting. After seeing abstract art in Toronto and New York Bush began to experiment with abstraction himself in the early 1950s

Bush was a member of the Toronto artist group Painters Eleven who banded together in 1954 to promote abstract painting. Through this involvement he met the influential New York City art critic Clement Greenberg. Bush was encouraged by Greenberg to abandon his Abstract Expressionist style characterized by hovering amorphous shapes on the picture plane. He would simplify his composition by using an all-over coverage of thinly applied bright colours inspired by his watercolour sketches. His work is based on an abstract record of his perceptions. He did not expect the viewer to see the flower or hear the music that inspired his work, but only to share in the feeling through his painting.