Lot 13: Raymond John Mead 1921 - 1998 Canadian oil on

Raymond John Mead 1921 - 1998 Canadian oil on canvas Dark Center 24 x 20 inches 61 x 50.8 centimeters signed and on verso titled and inscribed ""$150"" Provenance:Acquired directly from the Artist by a Private Collector, Montreal By descent to the present Private Estate, Ontario Exhibited:Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Formal Lyricist, January 8 - February 7, 1960, traveling to Galerie de l'étable, Montreal, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and Galerie Denyse Delrue, Montreal Ray Mead's early training at the Slade School of Art in London, England, provided an academic foundation which was to be interrupted by World War II, when he served in the Royal Air Force. The war years brought him to Canada to train pilots and led him to settle there, first in Hamilton, Ontario. Encouraged by his great friend Hortense Gordon, and influenced by her admiration of American Hans Hofmann's teaching, Mead's work had its first Canadian exposure at the Art Gallery of Hamilton's annual exhibitions from 1947 to 1951. Exhibiting in group and solo exhibitions throughout the 1950s, including those of Painters Eleven, Mead's successful commercial career took him to the Montreal office of MacLaren Advertising in 1958. His abstract paintings of that period referred, like Hofmann's, to the landscape - in this case, the Montreal suburb of Beaurepaire where he was then living. The energetic, tachist core of Dark Center exemplifies the artist's intent to have the viewer question whether the central form is a heavy weight tethered to the ground, or a barely contained bundle of energy struggling towards the sky.