Lot 4: William Paterson Ewen 1925 - 2002 Canadian oil on

William Paterson Ewen 1925 - 2002 Canadian oil on canvas Spaced Tree 33 x 20 1/4 inches 83.8 x 51.4 centimeters signed and dated 1958 and on verso signed and titled Literature:Matthew Teitelbaum, Paterson Ewen, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1996, pages 47 and 51 Provenance:Private Collection, Ontario Neither an Automatist nor a traditional landscape painter, Paterson Ewen was an artist who evades categorization. Matthew Teitelbaum explains that, in Montreal, Ewen was "displaced from the English community by his questioning of the conventions of traditional pictorialism, yet distanced from the Automatistes by reference to subject matter." Ewen showed his first abstract paintings in 1955 at the landmark exhibition Espace 55. This exhibition investigated the relationship between Automatism and Surrealism and suggested that the new trends in abstraction questioned the accidental and unconscious nature of automatic painting. Although Ewen's works were included in Espace 55, his paintings remained spectator to the debate. Despite his painterly qualities of visible brush-strokes and thick impasto, which linked him to the Montreal school of abstract painters, Ewen's works from the 1950s maintained their commitment to the visible world. As demonstrated in Ewen's vivid painting Spaced Tree from 1958, regardless of the abstract qualities of the work, the figurative qualities of the Canadian landscape remain evident. Teitelbaum states, "It was Ewen's circumstance in the abstract painting circles of late 1950s Montreal to find himself not so much late (as in behind), but rather between (as in unaffiliated), not so much a follower as an explorer."