Jack Shadbolt was born in Shoeburyness, England in 1909 and emigrated to British Columbia with his family in 1912. Initially employed as a high school art teacher, he continued to further his artistic talent by studying at the Académie Grande Chaumière in Paris, and the Art Students’ League in New York. Shadbolt’s influences include the art of Emily Carr, Cézanne, the Surrealists and the Abstract Expressionists. Shadbolt rejected pure abstraction in favour of an approach firmly rooted in the natural world. As an artist and educator, Jack Shadbolt was a vital part of British Columbia’s artistic community.

Night Garden, like many of his works after 1970, uses the format of the triptych. A personal response to nature, with its vegetal forms and oversize insects, this piece reflects Shadbolt’s interest in the darker possibilities of the organic world.