John Meredith

John Meredith Smith (July 24, 1933 – May 9, 2000), In 1966, he began using details from still-wet drawings he had smudged – a way of working he regarded as his invention.

Biography Meredith was born in Fergus, Ontario, but while still a young child, his family moved to Brampton, Ontario. Like his older brother (artist William Ronald), he attended the Ontario College of Art (1950–1953), studying with Jock Macdonald, and became interested in abstract art. He developed from a study of coloured inks on paper which is also in the gallery collection. Meredith painted it with his parents in mind, thinking of them as spiritual beings, and it took him four months to paint.

There were more changes to come. Over a period of years, Meredith recalled the calligraphy of Oriental art, his symbolic imagery changed into abstract imagery, and he used colour to explore space, enriching his palette to include pinks, purples and greens, then staining his canvas in the manner of other artists of the period.

In these years too, he was given major recognition for his work and included in many group shows, both in Canada and abroad. Moreover, in 1986, in his home town of Brampton, the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives held a 30-year survey of his work. By the end of the 1990s, the work of Meredith, often painted with Expressionist brio, offered the public a more dramatic vision of the artist, but in reinstating colour and using the palette knife in his work, Meredith reflected more overtly than ever before the rich allocations of pigment to canvas so characteristic of Ronald and especially apparent in Ronald's late works with their thick layers of dripped and splashed paint. But Ronald was ill (he died in 1998) and Meredith may have felt that a tribute was in order.

Meredith died of pneumonia on September 9, 2000, in Toronto. The Canada Council Collection MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina Montreal Museum of Fine Arts National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa Vancouver Art Gallery Museum London, London, Ontario

Awards 1971 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award from the Canada Council.