Artist Elizabeth Campbell (1893 - 1978)

Almost UBI (unknown by internet) but no longer. Her entry in Fielding's American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (NY 1987) reads: Elizabeth Campbell. Born in 1893 in Iowa Falls...Studied with Alexander Nepote at Marian Hartwell's School of Design, San Fran; and San.Fran Art Inst., ...Taught privately. Received grant from Montalva foundation, Cal. Exhibited at Cal. Palace, San Fran; Louis Terah Haggin Mem. Galleries, Stockton; and SF Museum of Art. Living in San Francisco in 1965.

This painting is presented (on the rear of the canvas) to American composer Lou Harrison and his partner Bill Colvig from whose estate it was acquired in 2007. It has no title but always reminds me of a street grid. The painting came with some ephemera about her, a handout from the Maggie Kress gallery in Taos, a press cutting 'Beyond the Third Dimension' about her painting showing at San Francisco Museum of Art (undated but the 64th Annual Exhibition.) Also this artists' statement:

               "I am intuitively aware that space-time-form - the expression of reality - is in the process of becoming; the three-in-one appearing in an act of simultaneity. Realizing this, I sought for an objective structure  that could express new plastic relations in other than the then employed dimensions, and which could in turn, express the spontaneity I experienced in this process. Musical forms - and their relation to time elements and spatial structure - have been of special significance and inspiration to me in painting."

Carew Finch (1908 - 1985)

Carew Finch (1908-1985) was a British, possibly Irish artist, who studied at Grosvenor School of Modern Art. The NIVAL Artists Database (National Irish Visual Arts) gives his dates, his full name as Richard Henry Carew Finch and notes that he worked in oils in the Abstract and Landscape genres and that he is listed in Buckman's Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945 (1998). The final note 'Virtually no information available on this artist' says much. The above picture (gouache?) has no name but may evoke a fairground ride..

The painting was bought from Jane England (England and Co) in London in the 1980s. At the time she was dealing in Outsider Art and lesser known 20th Century artists. Auction records show one painting sold in the last 20 years - a gouache entitled Rain Steam and Speed. Price unknown. Nothing more known. The Grosvenor School was both a bricks and mortar school (33 Warwick Square, Pimlico) and a 'school of artists' (mostly associated with printmaking) its better known members were Claude Flight, Iain MacNab, Cyril Edward Power and Sybil Andrews + the Swiss artist Lill Tschudi.