Growing Pains (31 page)

The day that I picked my way over that Toronto slush pile outside the Studio Building, under a bleak, wintry sky, against which the trees of Rosedale Park stood bare and stark…the day I entered the dreary building, climbed the cold stair, was met by Mr. Harris and led into his tranquil studio,—that day my idea of Art wholly changed. I was done with the boil and ferment of restless, resentful artists, cudgelling their brains as to how to make Art pay, how to “please the public.” Mr. Harris did not paint to please the public, he did not have to, but he would not have done so anyway.

Just once was I angry with him; that was over a canvas, painted by myself, entitled
The Indian Church
.

I had felt the subject deeply, painting it from a close-to-shore lighthouse at Friendly Cove Indian Village out West. Immediately on completion I sent the canvas to an Eastern exhibition. I had
a red-hot hustle to get it to the show in time. The
Indian Church
had three would-be purchasers. To my unqualified joy and pride it was bought by Mr. Harris.

A few months later I went East for a “Group” show. After the preview, Mr. Harris entertained the artists at his home.

Taking me by the arm, “Come and look!” he said.

Above the supper-table, beautifully framed and lighted, hung my
Indian Church
.

Surely Mr. Harris’s house must have bewitched the thing! It was better than I had thought. I had hurried it into its crate, having hardly given a second glance at it.

I had scarcely the courage to look now. There were people all round the picture saying kind things about it. I was embarrassed, being unused to criticism of that sort. Out West, why, only a week before, I had attended an exhibition of the Island Arts and Crafts Society. My sisters invited me to take tea with them at the social function connected with the affair. I draggled behind them hating it. We had tea and gossip with friends. No one mentioned my two canvases, so I hoped that perhaps they had been rejected, for I shrank from facing them with my sisters present and with people I knew standing about, people who, I was aware, hated my work.

They were hanging in the last room, right in front of the door. With an angry snort my most antagonistic sister saw and turned sharply back.

“We will go again to the flower paintings. I like them,” she said pointedly and we wheeled. My other sister gave one backward glance.

“Millie,” she said, “I do like—” My breath stopped! She had never expressed liking of anything of mine.—“your frames,” she finished.

MANY TIMES MR. HARRIS
wrote me enthusiastically of
The Indian Church
. He sent it to an exhibition in the United States and wrote, “I went to the U.S. Show. Your Church was the best thing there, a swell canvas. I do not think you will do anything better.”

At that I flew into a rage. Mr. Harris thought I had reached the limit of my capabilities, did he! Well, my limit was not going to congeal round that Indian Church! I sent other work East. He compared it unfavourably with the
Indian Church
—I had thought this work just as good, perhaps better. Mr. Harris did not. He still praised the
Indian Church
.

“You limit me! I am sick of that old Church. I do not want to hear any more about it!” I wrote angrily.

His answer was, “Good! Still, that Indian Church is a grand thing, whatever and despite what you think of it.”

We dropped the subject, but he went on writing helpful, encouraging letters. A lesser man might have huffed at my petulance, even stopped writing. If he had I would have broken.

I HAD NOW BECOME
independent of Indian material. It was Lawren Harris who first suggested I make this change. I had become more deeply interested in woods than in villages. In them I was finding something that was peculiarly my own. While working on the Indian stuff I felt a little that I was but copying the Indian idiom instead of expressing my own findings.

To gain freedom I saw I must use broad surfaces, not stint material nor space. Material in the West was expensive, space cheap enough. I bought cheap paper by the quire. Carrying a light, folding cedar-wood drawing board, a bottle of gasoline, large bristle brushes and oil paints, I spent all the time I could in the woods. Once or twice each summer I rented some tumble-down
shack in too lonesome a part to be wanted by summer campers. Here, with three or four dogs and my monkey, all my troubles left at home, I was very happy and felt my work gain power.

I sent a bundle of these paper sketches East. Mrs. Housser showed them to a group of artists in her house and wrote their comments to me. The criticism did not help much. However, they did all seem to feel that I was after something and this cheered me.

Lawren Harris wrote, “I saw the sketches. They are vigorous, alive, creative … . Personally I do not feel that your sketches are subject to criticism, they represent vital intentions. One can only say, ‘I like this one or I do not like that.’ They are unusually individual and soaked with what you are after, more than you realize, perhaps … . Don’t let anything put you off…even if you come through with but one out of three or four endeavours, hitting the mark, the thing woven into vital song…keep at it.”

“WHEN, IN MY
last letter,” wrote Mr. Harris, “I said there is no evolution in Art…that I think is true, but not with each individual artist. Each artist does unfold, come to his or her particular fulness. But in Art as a whole, there is not evolution; there is change of idiom, approach and expression—development of means, media, and paraphernalia…. The old Masters have not been surpassed. Modern artists do different things in terms of their day, place and attitude. Great works of Art are the same yesterday, today and forever. We but endeavour to be ourselves, deeply ourselves; then we approach the precincts of Great Art—timeless—the Soul throughout eternity in essence.”

LAWREN HARRIS DID NOT
separate Art from life. You could chatter to him freely about what to most people seemed trivialities; observations on woodsey things and about animals as well as
about work, honest observations interested him. I wrote him of my friendship with Sophie, the Indian woman.

“It goes to prove,” he replied, “that race, colour, class and caste mean nothing in reality; quality of soul alone counts. Deep love transcends even quality of soul … . It is unusual, so deep a relationship between folks of different races.”

SOMETIMES MY LETTERS
were all bubble—loveliness of the woods and creatures—again, they dripped with despairs and perplexities. Then he would try to set my crookedness straight. He would write, “In despair again? Now that is too bad. Let us be as philosophical as we can about it. Despair is part and parcel of every creative individual. Some succumb to it and are swamped for this life. It can’t be conquered, one rises out of it. Creative rhythm plunges us into it, then lifts us till we are driven to extricate. None of it is bad. We cannot stop the rhythm but we can detach ourselves from it—we need not be completely immersed…we have to learn not to be! How? By not resisting. Resistance is only an aggravation!—one I think that we should escape from if we learned that all things must be faced, then they lose their potency. It is no good to tell you that your work does not warrant despair. Every creative individual despairs, always has since the beginning of time. No matter how fine the things are, there are always finer things to be done and still finer
ad in
fi
nitum
… . We have to be intense about what we are doing but think what intensity does, what it draws into itself—then, do you wonder that, if things do not go as well as we anticipate, the reaction from intensity is despair? Keep on working, change your approach, perhaps, but don’t change your attitude.”

ARTHUR LISMER,
the lecturing member of the Group of Seven, came West. He visited my studio, went through my canvases. Lismer’s comments were so mixed with joke either at his own or at your expense that you never quite knew where you stood. His criticism left me in a blur. On the lecture platform Lismer draped himself over the piano and worked modern Art enthusiastically, amusing as well as impressive.

Lawren Harris wrote, “Lismer is back from the West, full of his trip. He had great things to say of your present work, could see it emerging into fruition… . If I could convey to you his look when he talked about your work, discouragement would never enter your mind again….I suppose we are only content when all our sails are up and full of the winds of heaven—certainly the doldrums are trying….I hope all your sails are up and full of the winds of heaven under high great skies.”

Mr. Harris wrote me of making a selection of pictures for an All Canadian Show in the United States, “The choice was left to Jackson and me. Yours were all damned good things. I feel there is nothing being done like them in Canada…their spirit, feeling, design, handling, is different and tremendously expressive of the British Columbia Coast—its spirit—perhaps far more than you realize. We who are close to certain things hardly realize the intensity and authenticity of what we do to others who are less close. Your work is a joy to us here, a real vital contribution.”

Thus he cheered, gave me heart.

In answer to a perplexed letter of mine he wrote, “The lady you speak of who was moved by your work was right; you may not think so, but, perhaps you are not seeing what you do entirely clearly. You get immersed in problems, the reaction from creative
activity, dissatisfaction from the feeling that you have not realized what you desired. We all are in such matters, and it is all as it should be, there is no finality, no absolute standard, no infallible judge… . Life is creative and Art, creative Art is Life.”

Every letter he wrote stimulated me to search deeper. Lawren Harris made things worth while for their own sake.

Again he wrote, “Everything you say describes the true Artist … there is no realization, only momentum towards realization. The
becoming of all
, satisfying, completion, fulfilment, something indeed that we cannot attain individually, separately, only as the complete spiritual solidarity, mankind… . Strive we must….”

Again, “Your canvases hang in the O.S.A. show. The consensus of opinion, best opinion, is that they are a very great advance on your previous work. It is as if your ideas, vision, feelings, were coming to precise expression; yet nowhere is the work mechanical, laboured or obvious. For goodness sake, don’t let temporary depression, isolation, or any other feeling interfere with your work… . Keep on … do what you feel like doing most. Remember, when discouraged, that there is a rhythm of elation and dejection; and that we stimulate it by creative endeavour… . Gracious, what we stir up when we really come to live! When we enter the stream of creative life, then we are on our own and have to find self-reliance, active conviction, learn to see logic behind the inner struggle. Do, please, keep on and know, if it will help you, that your work has tremendously improved; know, too, that the greater it becomes the less you will be aware of it, perhaps be almost incapable of being convinced; what does that matter? There is only one way—keep on.—How can greatness be true greatness unless it transcend any personal estimate? How can it live in great searchings, in the true spirit, in the informing unity
behind the phenomena, if it knows itself as great?.. . Creative imagination is only creative when it transcends the personal…. Personality is merely the locale of the endless struggle, the scene of the wax and wane of forces far greater than itself.”

SO LAWREN HARRIS
urged, encouraged, explained. I was often grumbly and not nice. On one occasion when I was cross I wrote a mean old letter to a fellow artist in the East who had annoyed me in some trivial matter. Lawren saw the letter. He scolded me and I felt very much shamed. He wrote me, “Tell you what to do, when you have need of ‘ripping things up a bit’ get it off your chest by writing to me. The party you tore up was a sensitive soul. Write me when you are rebellious, angry—Bless you and your work.”

Once when I was in perplexity he wrote, “I don’t suppose you do know precisely what you are after. I don’t think in the creative process anyone quite knows. They have a vague idea—a beckoning, an inkling of some truth—it is only in the process that it comes to any clarity. Sometimes, indeed often, we work on a theme with an unformed idea and, when it has passed through the process, its final result is something we could never have predicted when we commenced… . Of course there must be the urge, the indefinable longing to get something through into terms of plastic presentation, but results are nearly always unpredictable.”

“Sold my apartment house! Moved into a cottage in a dowdy district, old fashioned high windows—think I can paint here,” I wrote to Lawren Harris.

He replied, “Sounds good to me. Occasional uprooting is good for work, stirs up a new outlook, or refreshes the old one.”

When later I reported, “Bought a hideous but darling old caravan trailer, am now independent of cabins for sketching trips,” “Swell!” was Lawren Harris’s hearty comment. “Swell!”

“YES, I TOO
have been working. My present approach is by way of abstraction. I have done quite a number and with each one learn a little more, or increase that particular way of perceiving. Feeling can be as deep, as human, spiritual and resonant in abstract as in representational work: but, because one has less to rely on by way of association, it requires a greater precision… . A struggle all right… . There is no doubt in my mind that abstraction enlarges the scope of painting enormously. It replaces nothing, it adds to the realm of painting, makes possible an incalculable range of ideas that representational painting is closed to, increases the field of experience—enlarges it—that is surely all to the good, but abstraction definitely cannot displace or replace representational painting… . If one has not zest, conviction and feeling, one is no better off in abstract, indeed less so.

“Our limitations may make abstraction seem remote, but then once we extend those limitations, which is the purpose of Art, the remoteness disappears… . Abstraction can have all the virtue of representational painting plus a more crystallized conviction. I feel that it will become more and more the language of painting in the future and no man can say what it may yet disclose. Some day I may return to representational painting—I do not know. At present I am engrossed in the abstract way.—Ideas flow, it looks as though it would take the rest of my life to catch up with them… . When, in your letter, you refer to ‘movement in space,’ that is abstract, try it… . Take an idea, abstract its essence. Rather, get the essence from Nature herself, give it new form and intensity. You have the ‘innards’
of the experience of nature to go by and have done things which are so close to abstraction that you should move into the adventure much more easily than you perhaps think.”