Yesterday we zipped up to Kleinberg and back for a visit to the McMichael Canadian Collection art gallery. We realized that the sunny day would be perfect for travel and to take in several exhibits, some of which are drawing to a close, and another which is just underway.
“A Like Vision”: The Group of Seven at 100 celebrates the formation of the Group of Seven artists in 1920, although it ended up being the Group of Ten + One because several members came and went, and the "one" was Tom Thomson, who was instrumental in their formation as a group but died in 1917, mysteriously drowning in Algonquin Park.
Each of the artists is featured in this exhibition, some with greater emphasis than others, all intriguing.
It was an emotional and spiritual experience for me to walk through the McMichael in its entirety and that exhibition in particular. We lived in Northern Ontario for more than a decade and during that time we paddled and hiked to a number of locations in Algoma and the LaCloche Mountains where these men painted. We have actually stood on the spots where some of the sketches were done and enjoyed the same vistas.
We also felt the powerful sense of the landscape which some of the artists, Lawren Harris notably, experienced as deeply spiritual. For Harris it led him to Theosophy while for me it has always been the Creator God of the Judeo/Christian tradition.
After spending a contemplative couple of hours in the gallery we walked outside in that beautiful setting and visited the small cemetery where six of the artists, family members, and the gallery's founding couple, the McMichaels, are buried
i would certainly recommend going for this exhibition alone (you've got until December) and to allow it to be a spiritual celebration of the beauty of Canada, including its wilderness.
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