A pioneer of abstract art in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s, Paterson Ewen returned to figurative art by the end of the 1960s. After his divorce in 1968, the Montreal-born artist moved to London, Ontario, where he engaged in an emerging and vibrant national art scene, and started a new body of work depicting earthbound and celestial landscapes, which would dominate his visual career until his death in 2002. Many of these works are monumental in scale and were inspired by Japanese woodcuts; in fact, one of the most unique aspects of Ewen’s work of this period is the method of their making that involves plywood as a support whose surface would be gouged by a router, often producing dramatic textural effects. Image wise, Ewen produced one of the richest and most involved series of modern works inspired by celestial phenomena, ranging from Morehouse’s comet and solar eruptions to the galaxy NGC 253.