Untitled, 1986
Ray Mead
Artist: Ray Mead
Title: Untitled, 1986
Media: mixed media on paper
Size: 22 1/8” x 29 7/8”
Notes: signed and dated upper left
Provenance:
Mann Collection, St. Catharines, ON since 1989
Moore Gallery, Hamilton, ON
Exhibited at Moore Gallery, Hamilton, ON
The John Mann Gallery, St. Catharines, ON
CAN $8,000.00
Description: By 1986, Ray Mead was a mature and established figure in Canadian abstraction, using works on paper to explore color, composition, and gesture with immediacy and freedom. These pieces often feature luminous color fields, high horizon lines, and layered marks, reflecting his interest in intuition, accident, and discovery. The smaller scale allowed him to experiment with color relationships and compositional balance, influencing his larger canvases. For collectors, these works offer an intimate glimpse into Mead’s process while exemplifying the clarity and emotional depth of his signature abstractions.
“These are powerful, breezy drawings, the work of someone who knows exactly what he is doing….. Mead’s drawings now have completely integrated image and technique with rich variegated surfaces. They’re more daring. In making them, Mead is walking a tightrope. As he says, “When you’re younger, you hesitate.”
Joan Murray, Director of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery 1988
(The Robert McLaughlin Gallery Catalogue Ray Mead: The Papers Nov. 2- Dec. 11, 1988 exhibition)
Collector’s Note: Ray Mead’s paintings remain highly sought after by collectors for their historical significance and visual sophistication. Institutional holdings at the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal enhance provenance, while auction and gallery sales demonstrate steady demand. Mid-sized works offer accessible entry points, and larger abstractions attract premium interest, especially pieces linked to Painters Eleven or key exhibitions. Owning a Mead combines aesthetic beauty with a culturally significant investment in Canadian modernism.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ray Mead (1921–1998)
Ray Mead was a pioneering force in Canadian abstraction and a founding member of Painters Eleven, the groundbreaking artist collective that transformed the country’s artistic landscape in the 1950s. Born in Watford, England, Mead studied at the Slade School of Art under John Nash and Randolph Schwabe, graduating in 1939. During World War II, he served as a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force, training pilots in Canada and the United States. It was during this time in New York that he first encountered the work of American abstract artists, experiences that would profoundly shape his artistic direction.
After the war, Mead settled permanently in Hamilton, Ontario, where he became part of a burgeoning community of modernist painters and developed a close friendship with Hortense Gordon, an early Canadian abstractionist. In 1953, following the landmark Abstracts at Home exhibition at Simpson’s in Toronto, he co-founded Painters Eleven, a group of artists committed to advancing non-objective painting in a conservative Canadian art scene. The group’s bold, colorful work quickly gained attention, including a 1956 show at New York’s Riverside Museum, helping to place Canadian abstraction on the international stage.
Mead’s mature work is distinguished by luminous fields of color, graphic simplicity, and his signature high horizon line, which grounds each composition while evoking the landscape in an abstracted, meditative way. Influenced by both Canadian peers like Guido Molinari and American abstractionists, his canvases balance intellect and emotion, inviting viewers into a space of both visual clarity and poetic resonance. He often described his practice as a process of “discovery,” embracing accident and intuition as central to the evolution of his work.
Throughout his career, Mead exhibited widely in Canada and abroad, with solo and group shows in Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, and New York. His paintings are held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton, where nearly 500 of his drawings were donated in 1999. Posthumous exhibitions, such as Ray Mead: Living Within at the Royal Ontario Museum and retrospective shows in New York, continue to celebrate his contributions to modern art.