Christopher Cutts and Tom Hodgson first met in the late 1980s. Their meeting introduced Cutts to the realm of Toronto-based modernism and led to the gallery’s long-standing relationship with Painters Eleven.

When the Christopher Cutts Gallery moved to Morrow Avenue in 1990, the first exhibition at the new site was a solo presentation of Tom Hodgson’s work. The gallery held multiple shows with the artist until his death in 2006, and “Tom Hodgson, Abstraction Revisited” is the gallery’s first Hodgson exhibition since then.

Hodgson was known for his spontaneous gestural abstracts and intuitive understanding of composition. He was innately talented —a gifted artist and athlete, having twice represented Canada at the Olympics in sprint canoeing.

“Tom Hodgson, Abstraction Revisited” will feature abstractions from the 1950s – 1990s, both large-scale pieces on canvas and elegant works on paper spanning Hodgson’s remarkable five-decade career.

“A Hodgson canvas seems to storm over us, filling our eyes with its swarm of apparently unrelated images. … But when we examine it closer and allow the painting to assert itself we begin to see the way in which one image leads into another, and also the way in which each of the several levels is securely anchored in space. And while examining it, and others by Hodgson, we begin to see that the strange colours – purple, purplish red, dull green – are not only the result of a rather eccentric colour sense but also are the result of Hodgson’s desire to break away from all traditional usage and create new worlds of space and light.” – Robert Fulford, 1961