Town

L.J. Rouse was a freelance writer in Toronto.

No one with a serious interest in Canadian art can fail to be aware of Harold Town and his work. Described as being an artist of “extraordinarily varied skill,” he has been a prominent figure in the Canadian art scene since the 1940s, and is now the subject of a retrospective of more than 230 of his works. Critic Robert Fulford said of Town that he was a man who “... has developed at least a dozen different ‘manners,’ any one of which would have made the reputation of a less interesting artist.”

In this impressively outsize paperback his pictures, as they should, speak for themselves — in many voices, in 61 full colour, full-page plates, and numerous black and white reproductions. The book, while quite properly concerned chiefly with Town’s work, provides as well a smattering of biographical information, with notes, a bibliography of Town’s own writings, those of others on the subject of Harold Town and his work, a catalogue of the exhibition, and a list of exhibitions, whether group, solo or two-person exhibitions, in which Town has participated.