Lot 2: Alexander Colville 1920 - Canadian mixed media on

Alexander Colville 1920 - Canadian mixed media on paper Night Walk IV 9 1/4 x 8 inches 23.5 x 20.3 centimeters dated November 23, 1981 twice and on verso inscribed ""22"" Literature:Alex Colville: The Splendour of Order, The National Film Board of Canada, 1983, featured and discussed in the video. A copy of this video in VHS is included with this lot. David Burnett, Colville, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983, the 1981 canvas entitled Night Walk reproduced page 211 David Burnett, Alex Colville, Heffel Gallery Limited, 1989, listed, unpaginated Provenance:Heffel Gallery Limited, Vancouver Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver Exhibited:Heffel Gallery Limited, Vancouver, Alex Colville, October 1989, catalogue #13 Alex Colville's art is complex and intriguing, and the diagram at the top of this work shows how carefully planned his compositions are. The artist has divided the work into vertical quadrants, and a central circle is marked out into a five-pointed star. The vanishing point of the sidewalk is also clearly drawn. These are the balancing points of the composition, the points that move our eye around in the work. The central part of the work is filled with trees shrouded in darkness, and all of the visual weight of the work is at the right in the steadily advancing man and dog. We see in the diagram that a vertical line runs directly through both of their breastbones. Thus, in their movement towards us, they move as one. The theme of a blind man on a night walk is composed differently in other drawings and in the final 1981 masterwork by Colville. This poignant drawing speaks of the man's visual isolation and the mystery of his experience of his internal night within the night surrounding him.