Group of Seven Environmental Distortions

Growing up as a Canadian, the "Group of Seven" landscape paintings were the first artworks I seriously delved into, primarily through reproductions in our art history books. These glossy copies of the landscapes surrounding me became a gateway for exploring themes I later developed in other paintings and artworks, including identity and environmental art themes. This project delves more directly into authenticity and identity by creating distorted replicas of art history and landscapes using paint and authentic experiences. For example, I digitally manipulate reproductions of the Group of Seven's famous works from history books with a scanner, then recreate the new version in paint. The resulting paintings explore updated technological concerns of distortion and perception. These themes are also poetic, following themes of indigenous reclamation of the landscape, as they allow a more complicated version of the landscape, complicating the Eurocentric lens historically accepted as the norm. Furthermore, many of my paintings were conceived and executed in the exact locations in Ontario where the Group of Seven painters worked. Although the geographical area remains the same, environmental distress has irreversibly altered the Canadian landscape, a theme much of my work addresses.