Art of Perception: Jack Chambers’s Inner Vision

A painter with unsurpassed technical proficiency and a bold experimenter in film, Jack Chambers (1931–1978) created his art and lived his life with passion. After studying in Spain, he returned to his hometown of London, Ontario, to challenge conventional notions of regionalism. His theoretical 1969 essay “Perceptual Realism” encouraged artists to express their primary sensory experience, not simply reproduce their surroundings. Chambers achieved prominence as both a painter and a filmmaker and was vigorous in organizing Canadian visual artists’ rights. His work is as challenging and controversial today as it was when he made it. For more on Jack Chambers read Mark A. Cheetham’s Jack Chambers: Life & Work.

Mark A. Cheetham is a professor of art history at the University of Toronto. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has published extensively on historiography and art theory, abstract art, and art in Canada. His book Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature Since the ’60s was published in 2018.