[xoxoxoBruce]

It appears a new record will be set for a painting by a Canadian artist.

The record is currently held by 19th-century artist Paul Kane's Scene in the Northwest Portrait, a wintry view of a man and dog team in pioneer-era Canada that sold for nearly $5.1 million at a 2002 auction in Toronto.
But Agnes Martin's image — an extremely subtle grid of light grey pencil lines set against a soft beige background of acrylic paint — is expected to sell for between $4 million and $6 million next month in New York at a Sotheby's auction of contemporary art.

Like many of Martin's works, the nearly two-metre-wide painting titled The Desert would strike uninitiated viewers as laughably spare or virtually invisible. But others, including top critics and some of the world's leading art collectors, consider Martin's minimalist works to be groundbreaking meditations on colour and pattern, as well as brilliant expressions of her reverence for nature.

Describing The Desert as a "tour de force" that showcases Martin's lightest touch with both brush and pencil, Sotheby's contemporary art specialist Anthony Grant told Canwest News Service that such well-preserved, large-format paintings from the key mid-1960s period of the artist's career are extremely rare.

I understand art critics drink... a lot.

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