The Mystic Clouds, 1972-1974
These fifty-seven pen and India ink drawings are 8 x 8 inches on 15 x 11 - inch sheets of Royal Watercolour Society paper. They were drawn in Toronto, between October 1972 and April 1974. I first spent a few years working out their size, shape and general subject in various sketch sketchbooks. The title for the series comes from a circular abstract, pen and ink drawing I produced in Mexico in 1967 or 1968. The Mexican drawing has no other relationship with the series, except that, for a time, I tried to conceive the Mystic Clouds as circular drawings.
I am not sure where the theme of these imaginary landscapes cloudscape and skyscape drawings come from. I spent some months on the Canadian West Coast in 1969 and I spent the spring of 1970 sketching around Lake Louise, Alberta.
The subject of these drawings shifts steadily upward from views at sea-level to views above mountains to cloud and weather views to some kind of abstraction of pure but somehow still natural space. I have always thought that these fifty-seven drawings were a kind religious or spiritual statement.
In the early 1970s I watched some film footage that Canadian artist, Yvonne Lammerich made between 1969 and 1972 in British Columbia’s coastal mountains and islands. I was impressed by Lammerich’s film, but I don’t know how much it influenced me.
In 1975, two of these drawings were purchased by the Canada Council Art Bank and two were bought by Chief Curator, Alvin Balkind, for the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Currently, about half of the Mystic Cloud series resides in public and private collections in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and in Germany.
