Lot 65: Christopher Pratt 1935 - Canadian mixed media on

Christopher Pratt 1935 - Canadian mixed media on paper Crab Plant on the Bay of the Islands: New Colours of Newfoundland 19 3/4 x 37 3/4 inches 50.2 x 95.9 centimeters signed, titled, dated 2009 and inscribed ""CC Plant April 2009"" and on verso signed, titled and dated Literature:Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Christopher Pratt: All My Own Work, National Gallery of Canada, 2005, page 100 Provenance:Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver Estate of James M. Brickley, Vancouver Christopher Pratt's subjects of working structures have included freight and salt sheds, towers, trains, abandoned whaling stations and, in this evocative work, a crab plant. In Pratt's reductive realist images, each element is carefully considered, particularly light. He stated, "The most important thing in my work is light. Composition and design are important elements in any two-dimensional art, but in mine they are the bones, and light is the flesh and blood. It is an essential metaphor for life." In this image, a pale glow on the horizon, either dawn or dusk, lights the scene, as does a single streetlamp beside the plant - an interesting contrast between natural and artificial light. Typical of Pratt's work, the structures of the crab plant show Pratt's awareness of line and perspective. The light revealing these features is very subtle, a product of successive stages of refinement. Pratt explained, "I may spend weeks just glazing in lights and darks, building up contrasts...tuning them so that the light 'does it'. When I decide I've gotten there, then I have that thirty-second rush."