Jean Albert McEwen works his compositions by applying colours with his hands directly to the canvas. His works are distinguished by the chromatic depth created by multiple layers of paint.

"It is through the dialectic of continuous movement, of varied treatment of this axial line, resting vertically, that McEwen treated the reflections, symmetrical or not, of the left and right of the painting, of the deformations and reflections that it can generate. (...) Even if the textures of McEwen's paintings then seem to vary almost infinitely, thickening and hardening under the varnishes, thinning in games of transparency, they still continue to constitute capillary systems, networks of continuous meshes, producing a modulation of the colour. But the aim is to radiate, under the more or less openwork chromatic layers, the luminosity of the painting itself. Fernande Saint-Martin (1973). Jean McEwen and Abstract Impressionism. Life of the Arts, vol. 18, 72, p.51-54. (translated from French)