Lawren Harris (1885-1970) is loved by Canadians as the leader of Canada's Group of Seven, an esteemed group of artists dedicated to the idea that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with nature. About one hundred years ago, roughly between 1920 and 1930, Lawren Harris made numerous painting expeditions, traveling to the Canadian arctic, the Canadian Rocky Mountains and to Lake Superior's North Shore in western Ontario.

Steve Martin, a proud son of Canada himself, wishes to elevate the knowledge and appreciation of Lawren Harris. Martin, an avid art collector in his own right, is in awe of Lawren Harris and his modernist interpretations of the Canadian wilderness.

Martin compares the painting of Lawren Harris to his American contemporaries, Georgia O'Keefe and Edward Hopper. Harris was two years older than Georgia O'Keefe and seven years older than Edward Hopper. Although these three had little in common in philosophy or background, they all interpreted the importance of color, shape and harmony in their modernist compositions.

In 2015 Steve Martin collaborating with the Hammer Museum at UCLA created this exhibition, The Idea of North, the paintings of Lawren Harris. These paintings were brought together from Canadian art museums and private collections. Together, they are a stunning master class in modernism. Harris' compositions are elegant, filled with soft colors and sweeping curvy shapes adding up to an incredible interpretation of the natural beauty found in Canada.

This article is short on text and long on large pictures. All of the paintings below were part of this Hammer Museum exhibition. The paintings are of all three regions Lawren Harris visited, the North Shore of Lake Superior, the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic north.

The idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris was on exhibit at the Hammer Museum at at UCLA, October 11 - January 24, 2016. The exhibiton was later shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Art Gallery of Toronto in Ontario.

In the exhibition's accompanying exhibition book, Steve Martin draws some insightful comparisons between the art of Lawren Harris and that of Edward Hopper as could only be seen from a Canadian's perspective.

Steve Martin writes, "It seems that wherever Hopper was concave, Harris was convex. Hopper saw isolation even where there was human company -- a negative force that pervades home and office --- while Harris sought the uplifting energy that isolation provides, as though the arms of the mountaintop could reach around and infuse us with nature's spirituality. What I was sensing was an upside-down backward connection: Harris was Hopper's inverse with Hopper challenging the United State's blunt-force optimism and Harris belying Canada's polite reserve."

Lawren Harris first visited Lake Superior in 1921, the first of several trips. Embarking on this trip, his goal was to find a true Canadian art. As he left the population centers of southeastern Ontario and ventured into the comparatively uninhabited north, he left behind him the kinds of paintings he had done in the past. Gone were his colorful urban scenes and his forested landcapes. His work dramatically shifted to bare trees, frosty blue skies and vast bodies of water. His scenes were dramatically stark and sharp. His skies were frosty with dramatic rays of light penetrating vast expanses of water.

One of Linda's and my favorite paintings in the exhibition was Ice House, c1923. The building seems to be caught in mid dance as if it has had to bend with wave after wave of incoming weather Its floors seem swayed due to the weight of ice inside, and its rooftop bent underneath the annual winter's load of snow and ice.

These Lawren Harris paintings of the Canadian Arctic are even more special in our age of climate change. If Lawren Harris were able to make the same trip today, the sights he would see would be far different from those he saw in 1930.

In September of 1930 at the age of 44, Lawren Harris along with Group of Seven painter A.Y. Jackson boarded the S.S. Beothic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on its annual September supply voyage to Canadian outposts in the arctic. The ship made this voyage in September because the ship would encounter the least amount of ice. The ship made ports of call in Godhaven on the Greenland coast, and then up the coast through Smith Sound to Etah and into Kane Basin. It then sailed along the coast of the far northern Ellesmere Island to Lancaster Sound, and continued southward around the top of Baffin Island, down the east coast to Hudson Bay and Chesterfield Inlet, then southward along the Labrador Coast to Nova Scotia.

Harris later wrote of their voyage saying, "While we were on this trip Jackson and I painted a large number of sketches, although painting was difficult as we usually saw the most exciting subjects while steaming through channels or while being bumped by pack ice. On many occasions we had to take rapid notes. These notes we worked up into sketches, crowded in our small cabin, seated on the edge of our respective bunks with only a port-hole to let in the light." Harris completed his final paintings in studio after the voyage, using his notes and sketches for reference.

Harris was most impressed by icebergs he observed from the decks of the S.S. Beothic which he found both elegant and monumental. In this painting, he heightened this iceberg's structure and exagerated the light and shadow. He observed how the quickly the arctic's low angled sunlight could change the appearance of an iceberg. In moments, it could go from appearing to be a solid to being a glowing floating cloud surrounded by the glow of turquoise waters.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

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