I’ve been thinking about influences lately. What are my artistic influences? Do you choose your influences, or do they choose you? Can influences run underground, or will they always show up in your work? How does influence work? Is anything original? My head was spinning. As I started to grapple with influence, I realized I was nibbling at the edge of a HUGE topic.
So I thought I’d be a simple as possible, and start with the most obvious influence I could think of—the artist I was obsessed with when I was a kid—Tom Thomson. If you’re Canadian you’ve seen paintings by Thomson and his colleagues in the Group of Seven everywhere from postage stamps to book covers. For many people, the iconic wilderness paintings these painters created are Canadian art.
And if you dare to paint the Canadian landscape, no matter how abstract or idiosyncratic your approach is, you will be compared to Thomson and the Group of Seven. They are inescapable, omni-present, and I think they’ve even affected how Canadians see the wilderness.
Tom Thomson, In the Northland, 40 × 45″, oil on canvas, 1915–1916
Sherrill Grace, a respected scholar, writes in Inventing Tom Thomson that Thomson is a “haunting presence” for Canadian artists. For creators in all disciplines, she says, he “embodies the Canadian artistic identity.”
Visiting the McMichael Collection
As an 8-year-old I fell under Thomson’s spell. My parents took me to the McMichael Collection a lot when I was a kid. They loved art and they loved to hike, and you can do both at the McMichael. It’s one of the premiere collections of Canadian art—and at its core are works by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven.
Originally the gallery was a family home, with an indoor pool! Not great for preserving paintings, but as a kid I thought that pool was the coolest thing ever. You could see it through a window in one of the galleries.
I loved a lot of the art at the McMichael—but my favourites were Thomson’s outdoor sketches, done while canoeing through Algonquin Park and eastern Georgian Bay. They’re on small boards and the paintings seemed direct, honest, and a bit messy. They made me feel like I was in the woods. I bought a print of one of his sketches of wildflowers with my allowance and hung it in my room (my mum chipped in for the frame). It’s not the print I’d choose now, but I was in wild for yellow back then.
Tom Thomson, Wildflowers, 8.5 × 10.5″, oil on panel, 1915
WORKING AT THE McMICHAEL
As an odd aside, I ended up working in the marketing department of the McMichael when I was in university. The job came to me totally by chance. But, knowing the collection and the building inside out clinched the job. Every day for four months I walked through those galleries to get to the offices and every morning I felt a little thrill just to be there. (In case you were wondering, the swimming pool was gone by then.)
Revisiting a childhood dream
There’s a whole mystique around Thomson, his early death, his love of solo canoe-tripping through the woods, and I loved that part of him too. His career was so brief—only 5 or 6 years—so there’s a sense of loss around what he might have done. When I started painting seriously, I didn’t make the connection to my childhood obsession with Thomson. Not until last Spring, when my husband and I spent a huge amount of time exploring our local woods. I started remembering myself as a kid, not as a vague memory, but re-experiencing what it felt like to be a kid facing long days with nothing to do.
Then I remembered Thomson, and how important he was to me when I was 8-12 years old. It dawned on me that I was finally doing what I had wanted to do when I was that age—exploring the woods and painting. I had forgotten that dream, but it had found me! (Full disclosure: I also dreamt about being Jane Goodall or Joy Adamson (remember Born Free anyone?), a playwright, and an architect.)
Do I see his influence in my paintings? I don’t paint trees or woods. Not so far. If anything I want to take my work further away from representation into more abstract forms. But the landscape I’m immersed in is less than a degree south of his stomping grounds in Algonquin Park. I like to work with thick paint sometimes, and there are a few passages in a couple of recent paintings that might be Thomson-esque or Group of Seven-y. But that’s about it. What I do see is a common love of the Ontario wilderness, and a wish to convey what it feels like paddling on the water, away from the city and cottaged-up lakes. In that sense, he is definitely a key influence.
“the best I can do does not do the place much justice in the way of beauty.”
Snow Shadows, 8.4 × 10.5″, oil on panel, 1916
The Tent, 8.4 × 10.5″, oil on panel, 1915
Fire-Swept Hills, 9.1 × 10.5″, oil on board, 1915
Embarassed by Thomson
Many artists have grappled with Thomson, and in some the influence is obvious—I’m thinking of David Milne and Peter Doig. Both of them have acknowledged a debt. Milne went so far as to say, “I rather think it would have been wiser to have taken your ten most prominent Canadians and sunk them in Canoe Lake — and saved Tom Thomson.” While Doig remembered that growing up in Canada the Group of Seven was “the very last thing you would want to be associated with—they were on every calendar and postage stamp,” though he was drawn to Thomson’s work.
I’ve felt that embarrassment about declaring Thomson an early influence. It’s just so obvious. It’s the Canadian art equivalent of acknowledging that the Beatles wrote some good tunes. He’s so much a part of the air we breathe that to acknowledge his influence doesn’t feel very meaningful.
I’m reminded of Tracey Emin speaking about her love of Edvard Munch’s work. She felt that The Scream of Nature ending up on keychains has blinded us to the merit of his work. (I heard her interviewed on the podcast ArtTalk.) Similarly, I think the ubiquity of Thomson’s work in Canada has made it almost impossible for us to see how fresh, alive, and evocative his work is.
Who was your earliest influence?
Whether you’re an artist or an art lover, was there an artist you admired when you were a kid? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear about your earliest influence.
INFO ON THOMSON
If you’re curious about Thomson’s work, there are some good sources online. Art Canada Institute has a free online piece that gives you a short biography, some key works, and a sense of his importance. Many of his works are available to download on Wiki Commons, as they’re in the public domain in Canada.
All images used are from Wiki Commons.
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