Dennis Eugene Norman Burton

Heffel Auction House Biography and Notes

Bye Bye Blackbird can be seen as a culmination of Dennis Burton's interests at the time in abstraction and jazz. Following William Ronald's first one-man show at the Hart House Gallery in Toronto in 1954, Burton recalled being so excited by what he saw that he and fellow artist Gordon Rayner returned to their studio vowing never to paint representational artwork again (although Burton did later return to representational work, becoming renowned for his Garterbeltmania series in 1965). Burton, who played saxophone, was one of the founding members of the Artists' Jazz Band which played at The Isaacs Gallery. Playing in the band was important for Burton and his fellow artist-musician colleagues such as Richard Gorman, Graham Coughtry, Nobuo Kubota and Robert Markle. Jazz was a language that they shared and they regarded their artwork as being parallel to jazz improvisation. Completely non-figurative, except for the title, this stunning work reads like the free jazz of the late 1950s and early 1960s, in which metre, beat and formal symmetry all disappear into the loose harmony of the work.