Growing Pains (29 page)

I went to Ottawa but all the while I was there I was saying to myself, “I must see those pictures of Mr. Harris’s again before I go West.” They had torn me.

THE OTTAWA SHOW
was a success. All the familiar things of my West—totem poles, canoes, baskets, pictures (a large percentage of the pictures were mine). It embarrassed me to see so much of myself exhibited. The only big show I had been in before was the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Out West I found it very painful and unpleasant to hang in an exhibition. They hated my things so! Here everyone was so kind that I wanted to run away and hide, yet I did want, too, to hear what they said of my work. I had not heard anything nice about it since I was in France.

In Ottawa all the time I was longing to be back in Toronto to see again Mr. Harris’s pictures. I was saying to myself, “I must see those pictures again before I go West.” They had torn me; they had waked something in me that I had thought quite killed, the passionate desire to express some attribute of Canada.

I arranged to spend two days in Toronto on my way home. I went straight to the telephone, then scarcely had the courage to ring. I had wasted one whole afternoon of Mr. Harris’s work time, had I the right to ask for another? Urgency made me bold.

“I go West the day after tomorrow, Mr. Harris. West is a long way. May I see your pictures again before I go?”

“Sure! Tomorrow. Stay—come and have supper with us tonight; there are pictures at home, too. I will pick you up.”

Oh, what an evening! Music, pictures, talk—at last “goodnight” and Mr. Harris said, “What time at the studio tomorrow?”

“You mean
this
is not instead of
that
,” I gasped.

“Sure, we have not half talked yet.”

So I went to Mr. Harris’s big, quiet studio again.

“What was it you particularly wanted to see?”

“Everything!”

Starvation made me greedy—he understood and showed and showed while I asked and asked. No one could be afraid of Mr. Harris. He was so generous, so patient when talking to green students.

“I understand you have not painted for some time?”

“No.”

“Are you going to now?”

“Yes.”

“Here is a list of books that may help. You are isolated out there. Keep in touch with us. The West Coast Show is coming on to our Gallery after Ottawa. I shall write you when I have seen it.”

“Please criticize my things hard, Mr. Harris.”

“I sure will.”

THREE DAYS AFTER
my return from the East I was at my painting. Mr. Harris wrote, “The exhibition of West Coast Art is at the Gallery. As interesting a show as we have had in the Gallery. Your work is impressive, more so than Lismer had led me to believe, though he was genuinely moved by it in Ottawa. I really have, nor can have, nothing to say by way of criticism….I feel you have found a way of your own wonderfully suited to the Indian spirit, Indian feeling for life and nature. The pictures are works of art in their own right…have creative life in them…they breathe.”

This generous praise made my world whizz. Not ordinary technical criticism, such as others had given my work. Mr. Harris linked it with the Indian and with Canada.

Sketch-sack on shoulder, dog at heel, I went into the woods singing. Not far and only for short whiles (there was still that pesky living to be earned), but household tasks shrivelled as the importance of my painting swelled.

By violent manoeuvring I contrived to go North that summer, visiting my old sketching grounds, the Indian villages, going to some, too, that I had not visited before. Everywhere I saw miserable change creeping, creeping over villages, over people. The Indians had sold most of their best poles. Museums were gobbling them. The recent carvings were superficial, meaningless; the Indian had lost faith in his totem. Now he was carving to please the tourist and to make money for himself, not to express the glory of his tribe.

I sent two canvases East that year, thrilled that “The Group” included me among their list of invited contributors. Eastern artists expressed amazement at the improvement, the greater freedom of my work. A.Y. Jackson wrote, “I am astonished.” Like Mr. Gibb, Jackson patronized feminine painting. “Too bad, that West of yours is so overgrown, lush—unpaintable,” he said, “too bad!”

I always felt that A.Y.J. resented our West. He had spent a summer out at the coast sketching. He did not feel the West as he felt the East.

MR. HARRIS’S
letters were a constant source of inspiration to me. He scolded, praised, expounded, clarified. He too had tasted our West, having sketched in the Rocky Mountains. He understood many of my despairs and perplexities. Sometimes my letters were bubbling with hope, sometimes they dripped woe. I wrote him of the change taking place in the Indian villages—in Indian workmanship. His advice was, “For a while at least, give
up Indian motifs. Perhaps you have become too dependent on them; create forms for yourself, direct from nature.”

I went no more then to the far villages, but to the deep, quiet woods near home where I sat staring, staring, staring—half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born. Slowly, slowly I began to put feeble scratchings and smudges of paint onto my paper, returning home disheartened, wondering, waiting for the woods to say something to me personally. Until they did, what could I say?

“Wondering?” wrote Mr. Harris, “Why I can almost see your next step. In wondering we dedicate ourselves to find a new approach, fresh vision … . Wondering is a process of questioning. Why has the thing I am trying to express not a deep fulness of life? Why is it not clearly and exactly what I am trying to convey?… Deeper problem than most of us realize…has to do with the highest in us….A talent or aptitude should be developed,” he wrote. “Should be worked hard, if we are so placed that we can work (as far as I know you are so placed). Your peculiar contribution is unique … . In some ways if a body is removed from the fuss as you are, and, providing the creative urge is strong to keep him working, he is fortunate … . Good zest to your work, you can contribute something new and different in the Art of this country. The more joy in the work the better. No one feels what you feel. It will surely develop far reaching results.”

These letters cheered and stimulated me. Of course I got into great snarls of despondency. Bitterly in my letters I would cry out, “When I hear of you Eastern artists going off in bunches, working, sharing each other’s enthusiasms and perplexities, I am jealous, furiously jealous!”

“Solitude is swell!” replied Mr. Harris. “Altogether too much chatter goes on.”

I knew he was right—stupid me—hadn’t I always chosen solitude, squeezing into tight corners in class, always trying to arrange that no one could stand behind and watch me work?

“You old silly!” I said to myself, and took myself in hand.

Two things I found of great help. First, there was the companionship of creatures while working (particularly that of a dog). I have taken birds, a monkey, even a little white rat into the woods with me while studying. The creatures seemed somehow to bridge that gap between vegetable and human. Perhaps it was their mindless comprehension of unthinking life linking humanity and vegetation. The other help was a little note book I carried in my sketch-sack and wrote in while intent upon my subject. I tried to word in the little book what it was I wanted to say. This gave double approach for thoughts regarding what you were after.

I stopped grieving about the isolation of the West. I believe now I was glad we were cut off. What I had learned in other countries now began to filter back to me transposed through British Columbia seeing. Ways suitable to express other countries, countries tamed for generations, could not expect to fit big new Canada.

At long last I learned, too, to surmount the housekeeping humdrum which I had allowed to drift between me and the painting which I now saw was the real worth of my existence.

An American artist came to visit at my house.

“Come, let us go to Beacon Hill or the sea, while morning is still young,” he said.

“The beds! the dishes! the meals!” I moaned.

“Will wait—young morning on Beacon Hill won’t. Don’t tether yourself to a dishpan, woman! Beds, vegetables! They are not the essentials!”

Suddenly I realized brag and stubbornness had goaded me into proving to my family that an artist could cook, could housekeep. Silly, rebellious me! Hadn’t I for fifteen years bruised body and soul, nearly killed my Art by allowing these to take first place in my life?

I corresponded with several artists in the East and I made three trips to Eastern Canada during exhibitions of the original Group of Seven, shows to which I was an invited contributor. These visits were a great refreshment and stimulus. The first time I came back a little disgruntled that I must always work alone, while they worked in companies and groups; after awhile I came West again from these visits happy. It was good to go when opportunity opened, good to see what others were doing, but the lonely West was my place. On one of my Eastern trips I slipped across the line. This is how it came about that I saw New York.

“WHY NOT?”
Mr. Harris said and closed the book of New York’s splendours he had been showing me, photographs of the gigantic wonders, her skyscrapers, bridges, stations, elevated railways.

“Why not see New York now, while you are on this side of the continent? It is only a step across the line. New York is well worth the effort.”

I protested, “I hate enormous cities cram-jam with humanity. I hate them!”

Mr. Harris said no more about New York. I had been much interested in his telling of his reactions to New York. He was just back from there, had gone to see a big picture exhibition. In spite of myself my curiosity had been aroused. Instead of sleeping that night as I ought to have done, I lay awake thinking, planning a trip to New York. Next day I acted; curiosity had won over fright. As I bought my ticket my heart sank to somewhere around my knees, which shook with its weight; but common sense came along, took a hand, whispering, “Hasn’t it been your policy all through life to see whenever seeing was good?”

“I’m going,” I said to Mr. Harris. “Can you give me a list of New York’s Art galleries, the most modern ones?”

“Good,” he said and also gave me introduction to a very modern artist, the President to the “Société Anonyme” (New York’s Modern Art Society).

This lady, Miss Katherine Dreier, was a painter, a lecturer and a writer. Her theme throughout was modern Art. She had just published
Western Art and the New Era
, quite a big volume.

A couple of warm friends of mine who used to farm out West had written me when they knew I was coming to Toronto inviting, “Cross the line and visit us.” They now lived on Long Island where the husband had been for some years manager of a millionaire’s estate. I wired my friend asking, “Could you meet me at the station in New York? I’m scared stiff of New York!”

Arrangements made, myself committed, I sat down to quake. I do not know why I dreaded New York. I had faced London and Paris unafraid. Perhaps
this
fear was because of what they had done to me and the warnings I had been given to “keep away from great cities.” I said to myself, “This is only just a little visit, seeing things, not settling in to hard work.”

Before ever the train started I had an argument with the porter. He insisted that my berth be made up so that I rode head first. I insisted that I would ride facing the engine, in other words feet first.

“If there is a axiden yous sho a dead woman ridin’ dat-a-way.”

“Well, perhaps there won’t be an accident. If I ride head first, I shall be a sea-sick woman sure, certain, accident or not!”

He grumbled so much I let him have his way, then remade my bed while he was at the other end of the coach.

I had no sooner fallen asleep than a flashlight, playing across my face, woke me. It was the quota and immigration official. “We are about to cross the line.” He proceeded to ask all sorts of
impertinent questions about me and my antecedents. I heard other angry passengers in other berths being put through the same foolish indignity. The dark coach hushed to quiet again except for the steady grind of the train-wheels a few feet below the passengers’ prone bodies and ragged-out tempers. That was not the end. I was just conscious again when a tobacco-smelling coat sleeve dragged across my face and turned my berth light on. Bump, bump! the porter and the customs were under my berth grappling for my bags. First they rummaged, then they poured everything, shoes, letters, brushes, tooth paste, hairnets, over me.

“Anything to declare?”

“Only that you are a disgusting nuisance!” I snapped, collecting my things back into their bags.

“If folks will cross the line!” he shrugged.

“Drat your old line!” I shouted. “It is as snarly as long hair that has not been brushed for a year!”

No good to try and sleep again! I knew by the feel inside me that we were nearing a great city. The approach to them is always the same.

“New York! New York!” The porter and his ladder bumped into the people, uncomfortably dressing in their berths.

I raised my blind—tall, belching factory chimneys, rows and rows of workmen’s brick houses, square, ugly factories, with millions of windows. Day was only half here, and it was raining.

Noises changed, we were slithering into a great covered station. There on the platform, having paddled through rain at that hour, was my friend, Nell. I nearly broke the window rapping on it. She waved her umbrella and both hands.

The station was about to wake and have its face washed. Sleepy boys were coming with pails and brooms. The breathless hither
and thither rush common to all stations had not started as yet. Nell skirted the cleaners amiably. I never remember to have seen her ruffled or provoked. Once out West I went with her to feed the sow. Nell lodged her pail of swill in the crotch of the snake-fence while she climbed over. Evangeline the sow stood up and snouted the entire pailful over Nell. There Nell stood, potato peeling in her hair, dripping with swill and all she said was, “Oh, Evangeline!”