The Evolution of an Abstract Expressionist Gordon Rayner was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter whose creative process was defined by constant innovation and a frequent transformation of his medium. His early training began under his father, a commercial artist, and Jack Bush. Following a period of working in commercial art, Rayner’s direction shifted toward abstraction, influenced by the work of artists such as Willem de Kooning and the exhibitions of Painters Eleven. During the late 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, he began to incorporate found materials into his paintings, a…