Lauren McKinley Renzetti: Finding Wonder with a Pencil

Finding Wonder with a Pencil

Walking in the Group of Seven’s Shoes

This past August I had the pleasure and privilege of running an artist’s retreat for 5 days in the most variegated part of the Canadian Shield just North of Orangeville Ontario. The purpose of the retreat was to sit in nature, and draw or paint our surroundings; trees, rocks, water, plants, fungus, bugs, clouds, and sunsets. Drawing and painting from Observation Plein Air style.

I have been teaching for over 20 years and taking a week to do on location drawing and painting was on my list of things to do since learning about the Group of Seven and Tom Thompson back in college. I spent many weekends before this retreat scoping out perfect locations and planning out when these locations would work best. I had seven students signed up and knew virtually nothing about them, their desires or their abilities just their names. I had planned to have three 2 - 3hour sessions each day, morning afternoon and evening. I was using the framework that the Group of Seven used. In the1920’s they used paint boxes that could hold 3 wooden panels, their oil paints , brushes and rags. Once those 3 panels were done they would need to be done for the day- as that is all they could carry in the rugged areas of Agoma and Algonquin Park . In theory this made sense for my group too.

In all that I have read about the Group of Seven and Tom Thompson, in their journals and letters and looking at their art – I knew there could be Magic and Wonder. They spoke about God and the spirituality trees exuded. In fact the way they painted skies changed landscape painting in Canada forever. I accepted their theories hoped we would tap into that Wonder; that Magic.

Many of the paintings by Harris, MacDonald and Thompson were spiritually moving but their imagery could be at odds with the basic concepts of creating depth. Traditionally landscape painters would work from top to bottom, background to foreground using large brushes to small brushes to block in colour and the location of everything. The sky being traditionally painted first in a smooth wash or glaze to show the evenness of the sky behind the middle ground and foreground. This group of artists did not do that. They painted in the foreground of trees and branches first and then wrapped the sky around the trees (like Emily Carr) or they filled in the sky with in the branches all in different hues, as if it were a patchwork of cyan, pthalo, ultramarine and manganese blues as the sky changed. This makes the picture plane fight; between the fore ground, back ground and middle ground all vying for the attention of the viewer. And yet despite this theoretical lack of depth, Depth seemed to be achieved. To make the greens seem even more vibrant they would not use an ochre colour for their tonal shading in their under painting but used a deep rich alizarin crimson red as their under painting colour. They purposely allowed the red to peek through.

Before this retreat I did not really believe God was really found by these men. I chalked it up to it being the 1920’s and 30’s and they wrote in a flowery manner because of the convention of their times. So I was truly amazed at how easy it was to find the Divine Spirit. Within the afternoon of the first day I found Wonder, I found Magic. After the initial demonstrations and discussion on depth of long view or short view, time was irrelevant. The rocks, babbling brook and the bark of a tree became my only focus. That session lasted three hours and it felt like only ten minutes had passed. The group was intent on their personal views and talking was not present at all. The closeness and solidarity of this shared experience was not lost on me. This time shift happened with every session that week. As the week progressed the sessions became even longer and the time flew by even more quickly. The end of a session happened when the work we started was done. And we would come out of our reverie with a sigh and a smile and a congratulations in our hearts for a session investigated thoroughly. We lived in the Now of those moments completely. The only comment made was usually when the sun had shifted and our shadows had changed significantly from our initial sketch. “ Darn shadows!”

By the last night the two students that stayed for the whole week and myself were up till 1 am feverishly painting from our studies of the day with small discourses on art and the process of making and how quickly the week flew by. You would think 12 hours a day of painting would be tiresome or draining but this was not the case at all. At the end of the week I felt rejuvenated, more connected to the world around me – more grounded than ever before and sad to see it end.

At the end of the week I understood -clearly -why these artists would sacrifice time ; from their families, their jobs that enabled their livelihood and all of the luxuries of an unban setting; to be out in the woods with a sketchbook ,pencil, canvas and paint to be one with the world experiencing the Wonder and Magic of the Now around them. This is an artist’s vacation at its finest!

Here is some of the work created myself that week. This is only a sample from my sketches and paintings.