Gordon Rayner (June 14, 1935 – September 26, 2010) was a Canadian

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. His way of creating art was idiosyncratic and characterized by constant innovation and often by transformation of his medium. Later, he integrated realism into his practice.

Biography

As a young person, Gordon Rayner learned to paint from his father, a commercial artist and weekend painter, and from his father`s close friend,

Jack Bush John Hamilton Bush (March 20, 1909 – January 24, 1977) was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-painterly Abstraction. Inspired by Henri Ma ...

. He spent 17 years working in commercial art, starting with Bush's commercial art firm, Wookey, Bush and Winter. An exhibition of Painters Eleven in 1955, and especially the work of

William Ronald William Ronald Smith (August 13, 1926 – February 9, 1998), known professionally as William Ronald, was an important Canadian painter, best known as the founder of the influential Canadian abstract art group Painters Eleven in 1953 and for h ...

, which he visited with his friend, artist Dennis Burton, at Toronto's Hart House Gallery (today the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Art Museum at the University of Toronto) turned him towards abstraction. Under the influence of the neo-Dada movement current in Toronto in the late 1950s and first half of the 1960s, Rayner began to combine found materials with his paintings. St Clair West Station art wall

In 1966, he began a new period in his work centred around images of Magnetawan, an area 200 miles north of Toronto, north of the Muskoka District. It provided him with a favourite painting place in which he could experiment with materials and technique while demonstrating how to refer to nature without copying it in his work. To express his feelings, he used oblique references, a thick and expressionist technique, and sometimes found objects. These paintings were intuitive reinterpretations of landscapes dramatically conceived. Rayner showed his work with Toronto's

Isaacs Gallery Avrom Isaacs, D.F.A. (March 19, 1926 – January 15, 2016) was a Canadian art dealer. Career Avrom Isaacovitch, known as Av Isaacs, was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and moved to Toronto with his family in 1941. Isaacs graduated with a bachelo ...

. For this reason, he has been called part of the Isaacs Group of artists, which include, among others, Michael Snow,

Joyce Wieland Joyce Wieland (June 30, 1930 – June 27, 1998) was a Canadian experimental filmmaker and mixed media artist. Wieland found success as a painter when she began her career in Toronto in the 1950s. In 1962, Wieland moved to New York City and e ...

, John Meredith and Graham Coughtry. Rayner had numerous public commissions, among them mural ''Tempo'' (porcelain enamel on steel) for the Toronto Transit Commission, Spadina Subway line, St. Clair Station (1977). In the 1980s, his work shifted direction to a new interest in the figure. He began to reinvent this crucial subject of art for himself using dimensions of the inner, more spiritual self and obliquely explored realism in the context of the body, painting himself in inventive scenes. Some of these paintings are called the Oaxaca Suite, since Rayner lived in Oaxaca in southern Mexico in 1993 and 1994. On September 26, 2010, Gordon Rayner died suddenly at home in Toronto.

Collections

* Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston * Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto * Art Gallery of Windsor *The Canada Council Art Bank Collection *The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington *

MacKenzie Art Gallery The MacKenzie Art Gallery (MAG; french: Musee d’art MacKenzie) is an art museum located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The museum occupies the multipurpose T. C. Douglas Building, situated at the edge of the Wascana Centre. The building holds e ...

, Regina * Montreal Museum of Fine Arts * Museum of Modern Art, New York * National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa *

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

* The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa * Vancouver Art Gallery

References

Bibliography

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rayner, Gordon 1935 births 2010 deaths Artists from Toronto 20th-century Canadian painters 20th-century Canadian sculptors Canadian male sculptors 20th-century Canadian male artists 20th-century Canadian artists Canadian abstract artists Canadian collage artists