Gordon Payne

Gordon Payne is a painter, sculptor and experimental filmmaker whose remarkable career spans more than 70 years. Beginning his painting practice in the 1950s, Gordon became part of Vancouver’s influential 1960s art scene and was associated with the Op Art movement. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Vancouver Art Gallery, UBC Fine Arts Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery and Burnaby Art Gallery.

Always an experimenter, Gordon created avant-garde 16mm films and, in 1970, founded Kroma Artist’s Acrylics, developing professional paints for working artists.

A longtime Hornby Island resident, Gordon works from his Downes Point studio, where the island and natural world have deeply influenced his abstract paintings. His practice extends into drawing and sculpture, including a wonderfully eccentric village of what he calls “ludicrous objects” — assemblages made from discarded and gifted materials, island debris and things washed ashore.

Now in his 90s, Gordon continues to work in his studio each morning, maintaining the curiosity, discipline and experimentation that have defined his creative life. In 2026, Hornby Arts celebrates his extraordinary career with Introspective, an exhibition spanning 70 years of his work.