14

Laing hated, for instance, the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, who concerned themselves not with depicting the world as they saw it, but rather as they thought it. Such artistic exploration of the nature of consciousness (with its inherent rejection of the very notion of removed, impassive observation) was not of interest to Laing. He found Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" and other Cubist works, for instance, particularly disagreeable.

15

Photo of Mack Laing (right) and Gerald Tyler at Laing's artshow at the D'Esterre House in Comox, BC.
25 October 1978

16

Laing's gramophone.
19 August 2003
Comox, British Columbia, Canada

17

In addition to Laing's skill as a painter, he was also quite musical. Laing's neighbours while he lived in "Shakesides", the Stubbs family, report having heard him often playing the violin on his back porch before he went deaf. In his adolescent years, Laing could sing, read music, and played three instruments. Both Mack and his wife Ethel Laing were keen appreciators of classical music; they kept an excellent collection of recordings for their gramophone. Letters to and from P.A. Taverner suggest that Laing was something of an authority on good classical recordings among his peers.