The Essence

Oil sketches by Tom Thompson

Escaping a ‘hamster wheel’ of daily grind, for twenty years now I found a solace and calming peace on Madawaska river – on our 2.5 acres of untouched nature, deep waters shimmering with mirages of seasonal colors, a bliss of cleansing in deep waters of the lake and immersing in scents of giant white pines – it became the essence of Canada for us.

Tom Thomson is a Canadian icon.  Short and prolific artistic life, seclusion, Algonquin, a source of inspiration, and of his mysterious demise. A lonely pine on a cliff, weathering the elements, inscribed in the Canadian psyche.  Symbolic, yet far from a stereotype – Thompson lived in Algonquin through seasons in a rustic cabin studio – a connection deeper and more existential then we could have ever experienced on our short canoe thrills, imagining we are following in his footsteps.

Visiting McMichael’s collection, we encountered an exhibit of Tom Thomson’s oil sketches on wood panels in small formats, a key to his ‘process’. A quick capture of a mesmerizing landscape, giant skies, horizons, pines, lakes – a burning immediacy reflected in rush strokes, quick colors, thick layers, only the essence.

In so many non-explainable ways, these small oil sketches hit my nerve more than any of his large paintings made from them – is it Madawaska, a fleeting moment of sun casting the final ray before setting, the reflection of autumn leaves in deep green of the lake disturbed instantly by a gust of wind…a moment, transient, escaping…an urge to sketch them before they dissappear, colors and light changing as fast as the breath.

I love the small scale of these paintings, an urgent reach for the color of the moment. Everything else stripped away, the instant impression becomes the essence – of Canada, of his own fleeting existence in a magnificent engulfment of passing seasons in Algonquin…The beginning of the end in unforgiving waters of the Canoe lake, in his sketches, a suspended eternity.

How important is the own experience in forming a connection to the art – can a Tokyo dweller relate to Tom Thompson’s sketches of Algonquin without ever canoeing in a narrow deep river squeezed by cliffs of the Baron canyon? I don’t know – I believe in art being able to carry an universal connection to the experience, yet I find so much of personal emotion gripping my relation to these sketches – the beauty and the danger of nature undivided; a flash memory of our canoe tipping in the middle of Quebec lake in early fall, the very first existential fear; the emotional trauma of loosing a young and close colleague to drowning, yet never yielding to fear of swimming, endlessly, in an incredibly deep and mysterious waters of Madawaska…Somehow, accepting the essence, both mesmerizing and treacherous, of Canada. So uniquely captured in the art and life of Tom Thomson.