Living canvas

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2016 (3843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Painted Land: In Search of the Group of Seven from WhitePinePictures on Vimeo.

Everyone knows about the French impressionists hanging out in Montmartre. But do Canadians know enough stories about their own artists? How about Lawren Harris, J.E.H. MacDonald and A.Y. Jackson sitting around a bonfire on the north shore of Lake Superior, arguing about Theosophy and drinking billy can coffee?

Painted Land: In Search of the Group of Seven follows photographers Joanie McGuffin and Gary McGuffin and art historian Michael Burtch as they walk — literally — in the footsteps of the Group of Seven. Using archival research to trace the Group’s sketching trips into “the north country,” they attempt to locate the specific lakes, waterfalls, rocks and forests these artists transmuted into vivid, vital landscape works.

Directed by Phyllis Ellis, this documentary is crammed with beauty, both the actual panoramas of northern Ontario and the small oil sketches and finished paintings the Group created from 1918 to 1928. Ellis combines footage of the McGuffins backpacking into the backwoods with rare archival footage of Group members and some sparingly used re-enactments. There are voiceovers (from Paul Gross, Colm Feore and Eric Peterson) reading the men’s essays and lively letters.

The Group’s prolific output — and shrewd self-promotion — eventually convinced Canadians to embrace homegrown art rather than settle for hand-me-down culture imported from Europe. (“Dutch windmills and Victorian battle scenes,” as Harris put it.) As Canada’s first explicitly nationalist art movement, the Group of Seven helped Canadians see their country anew, creating a powerful mythology around the land and their art.

In fact, the Group was so darn good at mythologizing that now, almost 100 years later, we could actually use a little myth-busting.

Sometimes repetitive and often overly reverential, Painted Land is too easily satisfied with official history. Take Harris’s notion that the Group’s art sprang full-born from the primeval landscape itself. Like any painters, Group of Seven members were also influenced by other artists, sometimes even — yikes! — those over-civilized, non-canoeing Europeans.

Still, there are lovely moments. The hard slogging of the McGuffins and Burtch, both through the archival record and the rugged landscapes of north Ontario, pays off. The resemblance between iconic Group paintings and their overlapping photographs is astonishing. Set side by side, the parallel images demonstrate just how unchanged some of these vistas and views are, and how fortunate Canada is still to hold these vast wilderness areas.

Ellis’s documentary may stay on the surfaces. But as surfaces go, these ones are breathtakingly beautiful.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca