CURATORIAL ESSAY DORIS MCCARTHY: ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH NANCY CAMPBELL Doris McCarhty, October Gold, 1969.

The title of this exhibition, Doris McCarthy: Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. Roughing It in the Bush, alludes somewhat To support herself and her art, McCarthy had a ironically to a classic piece of nineteenth-century long and successful teaching career at ’s Canadiana. ’s book Roughing Central Technical School, beginning in 1932 and It in the Bush, published in 1852, chronicles the continuing until her retirement in 1972. British-born author’s trials and tribulations as she adjusts to her new home in . Doris In 1939 McCarthy again expressed her tenacity McCarthy was born in a more established Canada and adventurous spirit by purchasing a tract in 1910, but her groundbreaking life and career of land on the edge of the Scarborough Bluffs represent a continuation of Moodie’s pioneer overlooking Lake . This property — experience. affectionately named “Fool’s Paradise” — would become McCarthy’s lifetime home and studio, Doris McCarthy was born in but spent as well as a centre for animated artistic debate her youth in the east-end Beach area of Toronto. and spiritual reflection. Sixty years later, in 1999, She grew up with a sensitivity to nature and the McCarthy’s foresighted investment was donated natural world that would form an integral part of to the Ontario Heritage Foundation, along with a her painting in the years to come. Her childhood $500,000 endowment, for future use as an artists’ interest in sketching, combined with art classes retreat and residence. and a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, led McCarthy to her life’s work. She Her pioneering spirit was also evident in her love entered the art school in 1926, studying under of travel. Along with her many friends and fellow the tutelage of such notables as Arthur Lismer, artists, McCarthy regularly journeyed north to J.E.H. MacDonald and Hortense Gordon. At paint and sketch in Muskoka and Haliburton. the time, it was unusual for a woman to pursue These trips led to the collective purchase, with post-secondary learning, but McCarthy was artists Virginia Luz, Yvonne Williams, Margaret determined to be an artist, and graduated from Cork and Gwen Oliver, of “Keyhole Cottage” the Ontario College of Art in 1930. As was the and “Knothole Cottage” on Georgian Bay, which custom at that period, McCarthy showed her provided a base from which she could work work in prestigious juried exhibitions, thereby during the summer months. Throughout her solidifying her place in the Toronto art scene. life, McCarthy continued to travel extensively, She was a member of the Ontario Society of painting in situ and recording the world’s Artists, the Royal Canadian Academy and the landscapes. The early influence of the Group of Seven and the subsequent development of Arthur Lismer and Yvonne McKague Housser. a strong landscape tradition in the twentieth By the 1950s she had firmly established herself century in Canada served McCarthy well. “My as a skilled painter and lover of the Canadian grasp of it [the landscape] is intellectual,” she landscape. McCarthy had experimented with states. “I see it with my mind and my eyes and abstraction, influenced by her peers, the members respond to it with my emotions.” [1] of the Group of Seven and the artists of Painters Eleven, in particular her friend and mentor As a centenarian, McCarthy is remarkable Hortense Gordon, and her familiarity with the for her longevity, but far more important is artistic fashions of the time, specifically abstract her contribution to the history of Canadian expressionism, began to make itself felt in her landscape painting. She represents a model landscapes. These experiments played with form of commitment and creativity for subsequent and movement and masterfully reworked the generations of artists, particularly women, in elements of the landscape seen in her earlier Canada. Art historians and curators throughout work. In the mid-1960s a new style emerged her long career have extensively chronicled her in McCarthy’s painting. This hard-edge work, adventurous life and work, and she herself has which has seldom been exhibited, was the fruit written and published three volumes of memoirs. of a period of great productivity for the already Major exhibitions have documented her vast prolific artist. More than one hundred in number, oeuvre, including her oils and her accomplished these paintings explored the natural rhythms watercolours, culminating in the comprehensive of water, clouds and land. As William Moore McMichael Gallery exhibition Celebrating explains in his comprehensive 1991 essay, “She Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy in 1999. On the would reduce those movements … [waves, clouds] occasion of the artist’s one-hundredth birthday, … to simple structures of shape, colour and line. Roughing It in the Bush is a celebration of her The influence of the Post-Painterly Abstraction, inspiring life and work. With this exhibition, it is Colour Field and the Minimalist movements of my intent to highlight an area of her practice that the sixties is evident in the ‘hard-edge’ works. The still remains relatively unexplored, and to attempt influence is simply of style and method — the to look at her much-loved art in a new way. subject of the work continues to be the places the artist experiences and wishes to communicate.” McCarthy’s formative work depicted scenes from [2] This exhibition highlights these rarely seen the familiar Canadian landscape, and later from works for the first time. her travels overseas. Her style, as with most young artists, was influenced by her teachers, who for The simplification of form was pivotal in McCarthy included well-known painters such as McCarthy’s major breakthrough following a trip to

Doris McCarthy, Winter Horizon, 1969. Resolute, , in 1972. The Arctic landscape the patterning and composition of the earlier not only captured the artist’s imagination but work. also served as a springboard for her studies in form. The sharp edges of the icebergs, the blocks McCarthy’s first iceberg painting, Iceberg of colour and the shifting light offered a setting Fantasy #1, 1972, is a small blue composition that that perfectly suited the expansion of her earlier depicts an ice floe and shifting icebergs on the explorations during the sixties. Iceberg Fantasy Arctic water. When it is viewed alongside the #1, painted in September 1972, was the first of a hard-edge work Cloud Form #1, done in 1971, we series of more than sixty iceberg paintings. The can see beautiful similarities. Although it is a early Fantasies are hard-edge in composition, study of cloud movement, the dark background with some of the later works becoming more or negative space mimics the dark sky of the painterly, but McCarthy’s awareness of form was Arctic scene. One of McCarthy’s later large always crucial to the finished work. The McCarthy iceberg paintings, Broughton Floes in Spring landscape continued to be influenced by her work Fog, 1984, with its mountains in the background of the sixties: her use of the abstracted form can and ice floes surrounded by grey water, recalls be seen in her paintings from the Badlands in Georgian Bay — Rocky Forms (Grey Rocks at the eighties, her many works from Georgian Bay, Jackknife), from 1969. This hard-edge Georgian as well as her pieces from Bay scene, painted in similar tones, seems to lay and Tlell, in ’s Queen Charlotte the groundwork for McCarthy’s iceberg series, Islands. which was to become such a significant part of her oeuvre. We see this with another large hard- For Roughing It the Bush, I have not set out to edge work from 1969, Lakescape Horizon (Winter present a chronological view of the artist’s oeuvre. Horizon), and also with McCarthy’s latest iceberg Instead, I have elected to position works in a more painting, the spectacular Pink Iceberg with Floes, playful and form-based way, using the relatively from 2005. Pink Iceberg reveals the waterline and unseen paintings of the sixties and seventies the ice floes beneath the surface, and although as a jumping-off point for viewing McCarthy’s the forms of the ice are more graphic than masterful landscapes of Canada, both those that painterly, the similarities to Lakescape Horizon predate and those that follow this period. (Winter Horizon) are unmistakable in terms of composition. When reviewing the work of a single artist, created over such a long span of time, it is natural Many of the works in this exhibition reveal to observe experimentation in various styles. Yet McCarthy’s long exploration of an abstracted it is noteworthy that in all her oil paintings of the Canadian landscape. This abstracted landscape, Canadian landscape, Doris McCarthy’s continuity particularly as seen in her Arctic paintings, of form always stands out. When an examination has inspired oft-debated comparisons with of her work is pared down to an analysis of form, Group of Seven member , whom it is clear that McCarthy’s vision has remained McCarthy visited in 1928 at the young age of relatively consistent over the past fifty years. seventeen. There is no doubt the Group did Using the hard-edge works that so simply render influence McCarthy immensely by opening the form and colour as a point of departure, I have door to strongly personal interpretations of the made comparisons with her work from other landscape. As Moore writes, “In the monumental periods. Arctic visions of Lawren Harris, we confront dense and dramatic portraits of the surfaces of the Works that predate the hard-edge paintings are north. They are idealized structures and through interesting in this context. For example, Red them we feel the idea of place.” In contrast, Rocks at Belle Anse, Gaspé, 1949, was done in McCarthy’s icebergs seem highly personal, McCarthy’s so-called “Romano” period, in which inviting us to see and experience the landscape she uses a brighter range of colour, inspired by the as the artist did. Moore continues, “We share this painter Umberto Romano, whom she visited in place; her structures surround us and we enter Maine in 1948. This example of experimentation into a communion not with the landscape but with colour and abstracted form seems to be a with the artist.” [3] precursor to her later work. Rhythms of Georgian Bay (Georgian Bay Landscape in Reds), 1966, Because her work documents the landscape for instance, adopts the same bright palette. of Canada and beyond, Doris McCarthy is not, Similarly, Keyhole Harbour, 1965, presents an strictly speaking, an abstract artist. But neither is abstracted aerial view in rich greens and blues. she a landscape painter in the conventional sense. Oily Cross Currents Wave Movement, 1969, also Her strength lies in the binding of the two, and offers a useful comparison. This aerial view of her most successful landscapes are abstracted wave movements, with its vivid palette, mimics while remaining highly specific. One can imagine Doris McCarthy, Georgian Bay Abstract, 1969 viewing the scene that the artist is painting, and standing where she stood. The hard-edge works, This essay accompanies Doris McCarthy: although highly graphic and abstracted, still take Roughing It in the Bush, at the Doris McCarthy the viewer to a place that is strongly felt. The Gallery from January 13 - Februrary 24, 2010. cloud formations and wave movements McCarthy Curated by Nancy Campbell. Organized by the depicts are always meticulously observed and Doris McCarthy Gallery and co-Presented with the evocative, and the horizons and flora remain Art Centre. strangely identifiable. By comparison, as we view the more naturalistic paintings of the Badlands or COVER IMAGE: Doris McCarthy, Untitled, 1967. the Arctic, we see that abstracted forms and the skilful use of colour can sometimes achieve more than straightforward documentation in bringing a landscape to life. Every artist’s career follows its own trajectory and Doris McCarthy’s has been longer and more productive than most. Throughout her decades of experimentation and adventure, always fearlessly roughing it in the bush, she has created a place for herself as an artistic pioneer, and as one of Canada’s most precious interpreters of the Canadian landscape.

ENDNOTES 1. Quoted in William Moore, Doris McCarthy: Feast of Incarnation (Stratford, ON: The Gallery Stratford, 1991), p. 11. 2. Ibid., p. 28. 3. Ibid., p. 32.