M8

About M8

This contemporary abstract figurative painting is by John Meredith.

Canadian-born John Meredith was appreciated as a gifted and innovative artist.
He liked to explore and experiment with colour, form and technique. But his chosen genre was always abstract expressionism, and the human figure was his inspiration. Meredith’s brother, artist William Ronald, was famous as the co-founder of the Painters Eleven, a Canadian abstract expressionist group.
In this oil painting, luminous, loosely figurative stem-like shapes appear to mingle and dance across the canvas in bright blue, white, green, and burnt orange. Meredith often used a palette knife to apply his paint in thick, expressive gestures—a signature of his work. The black backdrop makes the colours pop. Meredith referred to his work as ‘mindscapes’—the visual imagery of thoughts and feelings.

“It would be difficult to find an artist with a more immediate impulse of expression, short of recklessness…” Paul Duval, Art Critic, Artist, Author

John Meredith was born in the village of Fergus, Ontario. (1933-2000) His family moved to the city of Brampton, where he grew up with his older brother, painter William Ronald. In the early fifties, Meredith studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto under abstract artist Jock Macdonald. After graduation, he worked as a cartoonist for the local newspaper, the Brampton Conservator. The first exhibition of his work was held in 1958 at Toronto’s Gallery of Contemporary Art, followed by a solo show at the prestigious Isaacs Gallery in Toronto in 1961. His artwork has been exhibited in Canada and internationally. In 1986, a 30-year survey of his work was organized in his hometown at the Art Gallery of Peel. His work can be found in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Art Gallery of Vancouver; and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, among others. Meredith was represented by the Isaacs Gallery from 1962 until the gallery closed in 1991.