Patrick Landsley

Born in Winnipeg, Patrick Landsley taught at Concordia and McGill Universities for nearly 50 years. Inspired by French modernism, his lyrical paintings and drawings are unmoored from more prosaic representation. The often rough textures, narrowed range of colours, and simplified shapes heighten the viewer’s experience of a picture’s surface. They also distill points in his life, including abstracted views of Greece, where he once lived, and the wild areas near his home in St. Thomas, Ontario.

Landsley transformed particular things—trees, fields, and celestial bodies—into abstract entities using physical means in his work to bring thought to life.