Capturing our world’s great expanse
It’s easy, sometimes, in winter’s depths, to get lost in your own world, in your own mind or your own four walls. A glimpse of the outdoors can give hope in the depths of February.
It is the world’s expanse that Saskatoon artist Greg Hardy communicates in his paintings of western landscapes.
“Big Boomba,” above, is part of his latest series, being shown in an exhibition titled “Northern Cathedral” at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.
The paintings focus on Lac La Ronge, an area about four hours north of Hardy’s Saskatoon studio, where he has a wilderness cabin. It’s a place he has painted often and that is familiar to him. But, he says, he’s spent much more time there due to the pandemic, and found the dramatic weather and light particularly inspiring last summer.
“I guess the obvious thing is just this giant sense of space. I find that if I’m in the mountains sometimes or in a confined situation or an urban situation, my thoughts just keep coming in, coming in, coming in and just keep bouncing around inside the head,” Hardy says in a video posted with his exhibition. “But on the prairies for me it’s just this continuous expanse of calm.”
The paintings reflect his process of trying to convey the feeling of a place through colour and light, rather than a specific rendering of space.
Hardy makes drawings directly from nature, the gallery says, carefully observing subtle changes in weather and how these affect the landscape around him. He revisits the sketches in his studio, allowing them to trigger his memory and interpret a specific moment.
When the walls seem to be closing in, when there seems to be no horizon to look to, when our vision is focused too closely on what’s in front of us, we can go outside. Or we can lose ourselves in the painting’s landscape, expanding our vision and our world. “Northern Cathedral” is viewable online at metiviergallery.com. You can also experience it in person through the gallery’s “In the Windows” feature of three works, viewable from your car or at a distance, at 190 Richmond St. E. in Toronto.