Catharine MacTavish
Night Shift
1979-2024
Digital print on Coach House Zephyr Antique Laid paper
(Printed at Coach House Press, Toronto)
18 x 12 in (45.72 x 30.48 cm)
Edition of 200
CAD $30
This edition produced by Catharine MacTavish for Le Chauffage is based on a lithograph produced by the artist in 1979 from a drawing she’d made while working as a night clerk in a hospital. This drawing was part of a series of experiments aimed at understanding ‘selflessness.’ In MacTavish’s own words, “the notion that a room can appear in the absence of a sentient inhabitant, if only a fly, is mistaken, crumbles under scrutiny, and is a pillar of endless trouble. It’s a trap, so the door out is a door in.” Since most of the original prints were either lost or damaged, the artist who used to work at Coach House Press was keen to return there to produce this new edition.
Catharine MacTavish (b.1952) is a Canadian artist living in Toronto. Working with drawing, painting, performance, holography and dollhouses, MacTavish is also an ordained Buddhist nun who studies Sanskrit, physics and mathematics. MacTavish is known for her impressively layered and labor intensive Night Vision paintings, which she started producing in the late 1970s and which often take years to complete. In spite of that, her vast and ongoing body of work is still relatively undiscovered even as some of her early work is included in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Hamilton Art Gallery.