KLEINBURG, ON.- In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection is taking visitors on a journey to experience art in fifty-year leaps stretching backward and forward from the McMichael's founding years in the mid-1960s. From June 4, 2016 to January 8, 2017, the McMichael presents three distinct yet complementary exhibitions as part of the special exhibition program 50/50/50—A.Y. Jackson & Tom Thomson: Wounds of War, Jack Bush: In Studio, and Colleen Heslin: Needles and Pins. These shows celebrate historic, Modern, and contemporary Canadian art at its best.

A.Y. Jackson & Tom Thomson: Wounds of War focuses on Jackson’s and Thomson’s First World War art and the influence each had on the other’s creative process after sharing a studio for a year in 1914. Their different responses to war—Thomson on the homefront; Jackson on the battlefront—their wartime art, Jackson’s work as an official war artist, and his post-commemorative paintings will be explored in the show.

“What you see in this exhibition is Jackson and Thomson, separated by war, having a conversation in paint,” said Dr. Laura Brandon, C.M., guest curator. “After their year together in 1914, Jackson went overseas and the two artists never saw each other again. However, the creative impact of that year was so great that in this show you see it evolving into some of their greatest work. And this is happening in the crucible of war; in a time of absence, stress, hurt and ultimately, tragedy.”

The opening date of this exhibition marks 100 years from the time Jackson was seriously wounded during the Battle of Mount Sorrel—an event that transformed his life and art. On view are Jackson’s only three known original drawings from his time as a soldier, in addition to, for the first time, the bullet and shrapnel that wounded him.

Travelling from the historic to the Modernist period, Jack Bush: In Studio will feature twenty select paintings by the Toronto-born artist Jack Bush, five of which have never been exhibited in Ontario until now. In the most classic sense, studio refers to “room for study”, and it’s the intention of this exhibition to gather these paintings in a new space to encourage conversations, debates, and dialogue about this remarkable Canadian Colour Field painter.

The name of this exhibition also refers to the workspaces Bush occupied to create these bold modernist artworks. In a one-room studio in his family home in North Toronto, fifteen of the paintings on view were produced. In the latter part of the artist’s life, from 1968 until his death in 1977, the last five works in this show were created in his Toronto Wolseley Street studio. Bush’s huge masterworks displayed in the mid-century modern gallery spaces at the McMichael contribute to an awe-inspiring “ship in a bottle” effect that will wow all gallery-goers.

“Jack Bush: In Studio is the first solo exhibition of Bush’s abstract work in a major public gallery in the Toronto area since 1976,” said Dr. Sarah Stanners, Director of Curatorial & Collections at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. “The studio played a crucial role in Bush’s artistic process, as this space acted as a sounding board to converse about and test colour; a place to face dead ends and challenges; a place to putter and make grand statements; and, most of all, a place to be absorbed in art.”

Colleen Heslin: Needles and Pins is the final component of this exhibition program, showcasing the contemporary art of Colleen Heslin, the national winner of the Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2013. Heslin explores colour, shape, and texture by hand-dyeing and sewing fabrics together to create paintings that are narratively ambiguous and open to interpretation. Her work further acknowledges the histories of photography and textiles.

As part of her process, cotton and linen are hand-dyed in small batches and hung to dry, which develops residual surface textures. The stained fabric is then cut and pieced together—similar to quilt-making methods; a method that is inherently linked to domestic labour, feminism, and craft.

“It’s important to consider that these paintings do not immediately reveal how they are made or what they speak to,” said Naomi Potter, guest curator and Director of the Esker Foundation in Calgary where the exhibition was initially organized. “Abstraction becomes a way to respect interests beyond western art history. Heslin’s use of colour and shape is informed through traditions of craft, design, and patterning, but the work successfully stands in dialogue with the Colour Field painters of the 1960s and 1970s.”