Jock Macdonald

James Williamson Galloway Macdonald (31 May 1897 – 3 December 1960), commonly known in his professional life as Jock Macdonald, was a member of Painters Eleven (Painters 11, or P11), whose goal was to promote abstract art in Canada. Macdonald was a trailblazer in Canadian art from the 1930s to 1960. He was the first painter to exhibit abstract art in Vancouver, and throughout his life he championed Canadian avant-garde artists at home and abroad. His career path reflected the times: despite his commitment to his artistic practice, he earned his living as a teacher, becoming a mentor to several generations of artists.

Early life Macdonald was born in May 1897 in Thurso, Scotland. Before coming to Canada, Macdonald graduated with a Specialists Teacher's Certificate from the Scottish Education Authority and a diploma in design from the Edinburgh College of Art in 1922. His first major employment was as a designer for a Scottish textile company, then he worked for the Lincoln School of Art as Head of Design in 1925. He became well-known and respected as a teacher at art colleges in Canada at Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. He said: "I felt that the curve of a wave, the breaker on the beach and the foam on the sand wasn`t all of the sea. The sea has solidity and transparency, cruelty and tenderness, joy and terror, cunning and friendship, all included in visual observation."

In the summers of 1948 and 1949, Macdonald studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 1954, he worked and studied in Scotland, London and France. He settled in Nice where he showed his watercolours to Jean Dubuffet who advised him to "speak in oil as you do in watercolour". His breakthrough came when Harold Town introduced him to a new paint material, Lucite 44. The new freedom he found using this medium mixed with oil transformed his work. Through his paintings, encouraged by Clement Greenberg, he sought to convey abstract matters such as space and time. Macdonald said: "Artists must discover idioms which interptret man`s new concepts about nature, especially about the interrelationship of all things, the energies of motion, new spatial concepts." He was a member of Painters Eleven as well as a charter member of the Canadian Group of Painters,

Record sale prices At the Cowley Abbott Auction, Important Canadian Art (Sale 2), December 1, 2022, lot 110, Drying Herring Roe (1938), oil on canvas, 28.25 x 32 ins (71.8 x 81.3 cms ), Auction Estimate: $50,000.00 - $70,000.00, realized a price of $408,000.00.