To quote the critic Gary Michael Dault, Town’s Snap series of paintings are “excruciatingly demanding pictures formed an eighth of an inch at a time.” He applied the pigment by stretching a string in front of the canvas, loading it with paint, and then snapping it against the picture surface. Each element in the painting is highly ambiguous, and together they create an illusory, fictional space. The overall concern is with richness of colour and powerful impact: the painting engulfs the viewer and dominates any setting within which it is placed.
Harold Town: Art of Evolution
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Harold Town, Snap No. 17, 1972–1973
Oil and Lucite on canvas, 182.9 x 182.9 cm, Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto