Provenance:

Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton

Collection of Peggy Marko, Edmonton

Heffel Auction, Sep. 2021

Literature

Robert Melville, Alex Colville, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London, 1970, reproduced page 38.

Helen J. Dow, The Art of Alex Colville, 1972, reproduced page 141.

David Burnett, Colville, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983, reproduced page 158.

David Burnett, Alex Colville: Prints, 1985, reproduced page 7.

Exhibited

Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London, Alex Colville, Jan. – Feb. 1970, same image.

Department of External Affairs, Ottawa, Alex Colville: Prints, 1985, same image.

Animals and the animal world have always played an important role in Colville’s life. He has, since childhood, always kept animals and it is inconceivable to him that he would not have animals as part of his household, so it is most natural that animals should take a prominent place in his work. Nearly one-third of his paintings and half of Colville’s serigraphs have animals either as their main subject or as a significant part in the image.

For Colville the animal world stands as an example both of the notion of wholeness and of the acceptance of limitations. He has spoken of limitations as being freedom, that our ability to act demands an appreciation of the context within which freedom can be exercised. It is this sense of limitation and freedom that is so finely expressed in the serigraph Running Dog from 1968.

The wire-haired terrier bounds across the playing field, indifferent to the grid markings placed there for football. The dog’s sense of play has a freedom that we can barely imagine, for even in our recreation we organize and determine our actions according to rules.

David Burnett, Colville, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983