Honouring Jock Macdonald, artist, teacher and mentor

We've just published a new web site in honour of the late J.W.G. ("Jock") Macdonald, my teacher and mentor.  It's to mark the occasion of "Evolving Form", a major retrospective exhibition on Jock's work, currently at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and, in June, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. 

http://JockMacdonaldRemembered.ca

O  n the influence of Jock Macdonald
on the work of Henri van Bentum:

Jock Macdonald and Henri van Bentum both share a love for music, as well as an intense interest in the metamorphosis of organic forms, the hidden forces in nature, and the transitory elements of growth and decay in all natural forms and life itself.

— Harry Malcolmson, Toronto Telegram art critic, 1963

….in Banff Murray MacDonald sent van Bentum to the late Jock Macdonald in Toronto, who had tremendous influence on his development, and whose death was an irreplaceable loss to students as well as art lovers.

— Lotta Dempsey, Toronto Star, November 26, 1963

….that van Bentum’s watercolours should resemble Jock Macdonald’s oils is far from strange, for the soft, blurred edges and the textures of Macdonald’s oils always strongly suggest watercolour effects.

— Harry Malcolmson, Toronto Telegram, February 13, 1965

Completely introspective in his work, van Bentum is probably a born abstract painter. Jock Macdonald, with whom he studied, was one of the first to encourage van Bentum to develop his individuality, and it is certainly under Macdonald’s influence that he achieved his present independence.

— Marina Sturdza, Canadian Interiors, October 1966