Sold for: $23,750

PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist
Drabinsky Gallery, Toronto
Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton
Collection of Peggy Marko, Edmonton

LITERATURE
Philip Fry, Alex Colville: Paintings, Prints and Processes, page 86, 1983 - 1994, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1994, reproduced page 131, as well as three graphite studies, and the 1985 painting entitled Western Star reproduced page 87
Mark A. Cheetham, Alex Colville: The Observer Observed, 1994, pages 75 and 86
Andrew Hunter, editor, Colville, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2014, the 1985 painting entitled Western Star reproduced page 110

EXHIBITED
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Alex Colville: Paintings, Prints and Processes, September 30, 1994 - January 15, 1995, catalogue #19.12
Art Gallery of Ontario, Colville, August 23, 2014 - January 4, 2015, traveling in 2015 to the National Gallery of Ontario, the 1985 painting entitled Western Star

The setting for Study for Western Star is a truck stop, the action a man in overalls photographing a glamourous blond woman in a fur coat, illuminated from the side. The camera obscures the man’s face, as he stands slightly behind the bumper of the massive truck, which dominates the middle ground and pushes the woman to the foreground. In the final painting, the truck is orange and Alex Colville chose to add on its side the manufacturer’s name Western Star, which also functions as an indirect reference to the woman. In reference to the painting Mark Cheetham writes that “To Colville, the man is ‘in awe of the woman,’ whom we take to be a celebrity, a ‘western star’ herself…He wanted to show in this picture that ‘women [are] mysterious, attractive.’ ”

In this study, the Colville has fully worked out the main elements of his composition – the positioning of the man, the woman and the trucks are the same as the painting, and the woman poses for the photograph, one arm up and one foot extended forward; in this evocative late stage study, she is the dominant element in the scene. Their relationship of the man and the woman is a mystery, and Philip Fry queries “Who is she, this woman starring as Venus in the glare of the headlights?...His refulgent evening star, flashing iridescent waves of joy over the eternal moon. His morning star, glowing as he wakes to another, more tender dawn.”

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