I'm a big fan of history. World, American, European, Canadian..... but when the prompt for week 46 was "history" the only one I really wanted to paint was , well...art history. Specifically Canadian art and the Group of Seven. I've been intrigued with them since I was a kid and first read their story and saw their beautiful paintings . How exciting , I thought, to give up a job ( Grapic Designing ) and travel around Canada painting!! Algoma, Georgian Bay, The Laurentiens, Lake Superiou, Canadian Rockies, The Maritimes, Lower St Laurence, The Arctic and here.... Northern Ontario! One of my favourite paintings is
Spruce and Maple, Algoma, 1919 by J.E.H. MacDonald. When I look at this piece of artwork I am reminded of my childhood playgrounds in Nova Scotia and Ontario. Trees were my play houses, rocks and streams my friends. I built forts in the snow , near large pines and birch trees. Scraped primative pictures into large moss covered boulders with pieces of shale. Such fun being a kid with the Canadian landscape all around me. Oh how I miss it! It's a great feeling to have had these experiences and know that somewhere in the Canadian wilderness a great group of painters were capturing a piece of my childhood on canvas and getting recognition for their betrayal of a landscape that was considered at one point to be " too rough " Just imagine that. Well I am very grateful to those magnificent Group of Seven , Lauren S. Harris, Franklin Carmichael, Alexander Y. Jackson, Frank Harrison, J.E.H. MacDonald, Fredrick H. Varley and Arthur Lismer for making the "unpaintable" pine tree , a work of art.
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