others to take and improve on and carry further. Don’t I hold that it is the work that matters not who does it? If we give out what we get, more will be given to us. If we hoard, that which we have will stagnate instead of growing. Didn’t I see
my
way through Lawren? Didn’t I know the first night I saw his stuff in his studio that through it I could see further? I did not want to copy his work but I wanted to look out of the same window on to life and nature, to get beyond the surface as he did. I think I can learn also through Lee Nan and Lee Nanthinks he can learn through me, light and life stretching out and intermingling, not bottled up and fermented.
OCTOBER 5TH
Oh, that mountain! I’m dead beat tonight with struggling. I repainted almost the whole show. It’s still a bad, horrid, awful, mean little tussock. No strength, nobility, solidarity. I’ve been looking at A.Y. Jackson’s mountains in the C.N.R. Jasper Park folder. Four good colour prints but they do not impress me. Now
I
could not do one tenth as well but somehow I don’t
want
to do mountains like that. Shut up, me! Are you jealous and ungenerous? I don’t think it is that.
OCTOBER 6TH
My mountain is dead. As soon as she has dried, I’ll bury her under a decent layer of white paint and top her off with another picture. But I haven’t done with the old lady; far from it. She’s sprawling over a new clean canvas, her germ lives and is sprouting vigorously. My inner self said, “Start again and profit by your experience.” Oh, if I could only make her throb into life, a living, moving mass of splendid power and volume!
TRIP TO CHICAGO 1933
OCTOBER 9TH, 1933
A letter from Lawren telling me of his visit to the Chicago World’s Fair, setting up within me the awfullest ache of longing to go and see for myself the picture exhibition. It must be comprehensive and wonderful. To be on the same continent and not to go to see it seems a shame. I wouldn’t care about the rest if I could see the pictures. What an education! Well, if it was necessary for my soul’s fulfilment I would see them. Maybe I’ve got to plough along alone and find my own way, going straight to God for knowledge and instruction. I’m not going to grunt anyhow.
Direction, that’s what I’m after, everything moving together, relative movement, sympathetic movement, connected movement, flowing, liquid, universal movement, all directions summing up in one grand direction, leading the eye forward, and satisfying. So to control direction of movement that the whole structure sways, vibrates and rocks together, not wobbling like a bowl of jelly.
OCTOBER 14TH
Things have to be in Toronto for the first group of twenty-eight by the 25th. Only three days more to pull them together. Yet knowing that, perhaps because I knew that, I chucked all to the winds and went to Beecher Bay with Phil. It was splendid. We built a fire, ate tea on the beach. Four little tiny beaches made by jutting rocky points with round, flattened trees and wind pouring up the ravines. Groups of small trees scuttling together in hollows, and frail wind-broken shacks — such glorious shades of weathered boards. Pine trees and grey sea and sea gulls and glowing russet-red bracken. All lovely, forsaken, free and wild. Got home to my ravenous dogs at seven o’clock. I took a long straight look at my canvases.
I THINK WE MISS our goal very often because we only regard parts, overlooking the ensemble, painting the trees and forgetting the forest. Not one part can be forgotten. A main movement must run through the picture. The transitions must be easy, not jerky. None must be out of step in the march. On, on, deeper and deeper, with the soul of the thing burrowing into its depths and intensity till that thing is a reality to us and speaks one grand inaudible word — God. The movement and direction of lines and planes shall express some attribute of God — power, peace, strength, serenity, joy. The movement shall be so
my
way through Lawren? Didn’t I know the first night I saw his stuff in his studio that through it I could see further? I did not want to copy his work but I wanted to look out of the same window on to life and nature, to get beyond the surface as he did. I think I can learn also through Lee Nan and Lee Nanthinks he can learn through me, light and life stretching out and intermingling, not bottled up and fermented.
OCTOBER 5TH
Oh, that mountain! I’m dead beat tonight with struggling. I repainted almost the whole show. It’s still a bad, horrid, awful, mean little tussock. No strength, nobility, solidarity. I’ve been looking at A.Y. Jackson’s mountains in the C.N.R. Jasper Park folder. Four good colour prints but they do not impress me. Now
I
could not do one tenth as well but somehow I don’t
want
to do mountains like that. Shut up, me! Are you jealous and ungenerous? I don’t think it is that.
OCTOBER 6TH
My mountain is dead. As soon as she has dried, I’ll bury her under a decent layer of white paint and top her off with another picture. But I haven’t done with the old lady; far from it. She’s sprawling over a new clean canvas, her germ lives and is sprouting vigorously. My inner self said, “Start again and profit by your experience.” Oh, if I could only make her throb into life, a living, moving mass of splendid power and volume!
TRIP TO CHICAGO 1933
OCTOBER 9TH, 1933
A letter from Lawren telling me of his visit to the Chicago World’s Fair, setting up within me the awfullest ache of longing to go and see for myself the picture exhibition. It must be comprehensive and wonderful. To be on the same continent and not to go to see it seems a shame. I wouldn’t care about the rest if I could see the pictures. What an education! Well, if it was necessary for my soul’s fulfilment I would see them. Maybe I’ve got to plough along alone and find my own way, going straight to God for knowledge and instruction. I’m not going to grunt anyhow.
Direction, that’s what I’m after, everything moving together, relative movement, sympathetic movement, connected movement, flowing, liquid, universal movement, all directions summing up in one grand direction, leading the eye forward, and satisfying. So to control direction of movement that the whole structure sways, vibrates and rocks together, not wobbling like a bowl of jelly.
OCTOBER 14TH
Things have to be in Toronto for the first group of twenty-eight by the 25th. Only three days more to pull them together. Yet knowing that, perhaps because I knew that, I chucked all to the winds and went to Beecher Bay with Phil. It was splendid. We built a fire, ate tea on the beach. Four little tiny beaches made by jutting rocky points with round, flattened trees and wind pouring up the ravines. Groups of small trees scuttling together in hollows, and frail wind-broken shacks — such glorious shades of weathered boards. Pine trees and grey sea and sea gulls and glowing russet-red bracken. All lovely, forsaken, free and wild. Got home to my ravenous dogs at seven o’clock. I took a long straight look at my canvases.
I THINK WE MISS our goal very often because we only regard parts, overlooking the ensemble, painting the trees and forgetting the forest. Not one part can be forgotten. A main movement must run through the picture. The transitions must be easy, not jerky. None must be out of step in the march. On, on, deeper and deeper, with the soul of the thing burrowing into its depths and intensity till that thing is a reality to us and speaks one grand inaudible word — God. The movement and direction of lines and planes shall express some attribute of God — power, peace, strength, serenity, joy. The movement shall be so
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