John Fox

John Richard Fox (July 26, 1927 June 16, 2008) was a painter, sculptor, collagist, watercolourist and draftsman, as well as an educator who lived in Montreal most of his life. His work beginning in the late 1950s moved easily from representation to abstraction in 1972 and in 1986, back again to representation. He regarded the two different aspects to his work as having the same concerns. He was often praised as a colorist and for his rich surfaces and subtlety of effects, even in his abstract work. As has been recognized increasingly since the 1990s, Fox’s paintings and particularly his abstractions are a valuable part of Canadian modernism. It was a lesson which remained with him lifelong. They developed and changed over time from abstract impressionism to abstraction with a collage element.

From the late 1950s to 1972 he preferred to paint interiors, nudes and landscapes, such as he found in artists like Degas and Pierre Bonnard. As an abstract artist, from 1972 to 1986, he modeled his work, though distantly, on artists such as Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn, orchestrating colour to create Lyrical abstractions which have a characteristically rich, distinctive effect. In his large format canvases he used various devices with which to paint such as the spray gun or sponges, cardboard and knives to lay the paint and masking tape and collage. The texture of his paint became thicker with time. At first, his paintings had a kind of almost monochromatic palette, then they became effects of shifting shapes to which he added marks which seem spontaneous, then used collage. In 1983, he began his works using undefined marks in charcoal and proceeded to add oil paint, mapping an allusive landscape or the body. Fox went two times in the 1950s (1953 and 1955), once in 1963 and then every year from 1977 on. He was married to Sandra Paikowsky in Venice in 1982 and he died there and his ashes put in the main cemetery. A show of his Venetian work titled John Fox. A Painter in Venice was held at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton in 2025. Venetian frescoes, artists and light inspired Fox in developing his large abstract paintings and Venetian scenes appear in many of his representational paintings, watercolours and drawings.

Selected exhibitions Fox's solo shows include: MMFA (1952, 1963); Laing Gallery, Tor. (1958); Continental Galleries, Mtl. (1959) (1962) (1963); Galerie Agnès Lefort, Mtl. (1965) (1967); Roberts Gallery, Tor. (1965-1968); Galerie Marlborough-Godard, Mtl. (1973); Sir George Williams Art Galleries, Concordia University, Montreal (Ten New Paintings, 1980-1981, Traveling exhibition to Art Gallery of Windsor; Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; Confederation Centre of the Arts, Charlottetown; Gallery Stratford; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton; Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, N.B.; Art Gallery, Memorial University, St. Johns, Nfld); Mira Godard Gallery, Tor. (1986); and in the 1990s solo exhibitions in Montreal (Waddington & Gorce, 1991); (Sandra Goldie Gallery, 2007), Toronto, (Mira Godard Gallery, 1990, 1993), Calgary (Paul Kuhn Gallery, 1998, 1999) and Vancouver (Heffel Gallery, Van. (2-artist with Jean McEwen), 1990).

Selected public collections National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston ON; Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton ON; Canada Council Art Bank; Museum London, London, Ontario; Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; The Rooms, St. John's, NFLD; In the same year, Alan Klinkhoff Gallery in Montreal held a retrospective. Exhibitions followed in 2011 at Winchester Galleries, Victoria, B.C., and the Françoise Calcagno Art Studio in Venice, Italy in a show of Fox's works on paper titled John Fox: Opera su carta. In 2012, a show of Fox's abstract work was held at Battat Contemporary, Montreal with a major catalogue. In 2013, a shows of Fox's work was exhibited at Oeno Gallery, Bloomfield, ON. In 2014, an exhibition was held at Dawson College, Montreal. Fox's work wa also shown in John Fox, Works on Paper, Centre d'art E.K.Voland, 2018; John Fox at Produit Rien, May 2022; and included in "The studio as creation, Stories of artists' studios in Quebec" which was guest curated by Laurier Lacroix at the Musée d'art de Joliette in 2023. In 2025, John Fox: A Painter in Venice, curated by John Leroux and Sandra Paikowsky, was exhibited at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton.