Paterson Ewen

Paterson Ewen (1925–2002) was an influential Canadian painter. His later works are large-scale wall pieces distinguished by the use of both traditional and unconventional materials.

William Paterson Ewen was born in 1925 in Montreal, Quebec. He attended McGill University from 1946-47 where he studied geology, and fine arts with John Goodwin Lyman. From 1948-50 he took classes at the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, studying under Goodridge Roberts, Arthur Lismer, William Armstrong, and Jacques de Tonnancour.

The influence of Goodridge Roberts can be seen in Ewen's works completed in the late 1940s. These early and often figurative works were followed by an exploration of abstraction which lasted through to the late sixites.

While in Montreal, Ewen was exposed to the work of the artists of the Automatiste movement (see Jean-Paul Riopelle and Paul-Émile Borduas), and became a member of the Non-Figurative Artists' Association of Montreal, founded in 1956. Ewen's abstracts completed in the mid-1950s are more gestural than those completed ten years later where he explores geometric forms, loosely related to hard-edge painting.

In 1968, Ewen moved to London, Ontario where he taught first at a local secondary school, then at the Visual Arts Department of the University of Western Ontario where he spent 14 years.

In 1971 Ewen's working method and imagery changed dramatically. He started working on plywood instead of canvas. The new pieces were physically large, often using several standard 4' x 8' sheets of plywood side by side. Ewan used a router to gouge out the surface, and attached objects to the surface with hardware. In the shallow three-dimensional surface he had created, Ewen then painted powerful images that grew out of his boyhood interests in geology and space.

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