{"id":11203,"date":"2016-02-22T12:15:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T17:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=11203"},"modified":"2016-02-22T17:15:28","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T22:15:28","slug":"local-artist-janine-marson-honours-tom-thomson-with-100-sketch-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/local-artist-janine-marson-honours-tom-thomson-with-100-sketch-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Local artist Janine Marson honours Tom Thomson with 100-sketch project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next year will mark the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of Tom Thomson\u2019s death. Local artist Janine Marson wanted to do something to honour the date, so she embarked on an ambitious project: paint 100, mostly on-location sketches in the same places that Thomson did. The project and exhibition to follow, Seeing through Tom\u2019s eyes: a discovery of truth, light and colour, <\/em>will be her interpretation of Tom\u2019s work 100 years later.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAs an artist, I find sketches to be the most valuable,\u201d said Marson. \u201cThey are something you experienced for yourself. You saw the sunlight, you saw how it filtered through the trees. It\u2019s an experience that can never be repeated. So I thought, I\u2019ll do 100, 8 by 10, oil-on-birch-panel sketches. That\u2019s what Tom did on location, so it seemed fitting.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the project, Marson has been researching images with the help of friend and fellow artist Terri Howell, who connected Marson with Kevin Clute at the Algonquin Park Archives. \u201cWe\u2019ve been given permission to go through their banks of images,\u201d said Marson. \u201cI\u2019m retracing Tom\u2019s steps \u2013 doing the research and finding where he went, what kinds of things interested him, and painting it for myself in my own way. So these are not recreations of Tom\u2019s work, they are my interpretations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marson credits Howell with being her \u201cmatchstick\u201d for the project. \u201cShe was the one who said, \u2018Have you thought about doing something for 2017?\u2019 She said she\u2019d help me and she\u2019s been my research assistant. We\u2019ve probably been out to the Algonquin Park Archives at least four times researching images that would give us a sense of where Tom was and what he might have seen, and then seeing where that was (in relation to what\u2019s there now). It\u2019s like being there and going back in time. It\u2019s helping me to have a sense of place.\u201d<\/p>\n

She began the project on July 17, 2015 \u2013 Healthy Parks, Healthy People Day \u2013 and has now completed 23 sketches. Of that first attempt, Marson said: \u201cIt\u2019s not a stellar painting but it\u2019s an honest one. That\u2019s what it\u2019s about. What am I seeing that day? What\u2019s the light like? What\u2019s the weather like?”<\/p>\n

\"The

The first sketch in Marson’s project is from a favourite location overlooking Smoke Lake. Photo courtesy Janine Marson.<\/p><\/div>\n

The project has required her to re-evaluate why she paints the way she does. \u201cI thought this would be good to shake me up a bit. I haven\u2019t worked with oils in 20 years. So it\u2019s the challenge of working in the field with a medium I haven\u2019t been working in that can easily get damaged in my backpack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"While

While painting Two at Two, at Lake of Two Rivers in Algonquin Park, Marson had to contend with the cold and snowflakes landing on her palette and her painting. Photo courtesy Janine Marson.<\/p><\/div>\n

Marson created a foam core box to put wet canvases in so they could be transported back to her studio, but that\u2019s only part of the challenge. She\u2019s had to learn how to work with oil paints \u2013 an unforgiving medium \u2013 in both the heat of summer and in the cold of winter with snow settling on her palette. And she\u2019s had to tune out distractions like tour buses whizzing by on the highway when the day\u2019s location took her out of the backcountry and into the Highway 60 corridor of Algonquin Park.<\/p>\n

When spring comes, she\u2019ll be going to Canoe Lake to watch the ice go out, just as Thomson did. \u201cA couple of locals \u2013 Holly Stewart and Mary Dawn King \u2013 are excited about the project and offered to take me around and point things out.\u201d And in August, Howell\u2019s daughter Meghan deLagran has offered to take Marson on a guided canoe trip around some of the lakes Thomson frequently painted \u2013 her gift to the project. By September, Marson estimates the project will be 90 per cent complete.<\/p>\n

In the spirit of her grandfather, she actually intends to complete a total of 110 sketches. \u201cHe was very inspirational to me. He always said if you\u2019re going to do anything you should give 110 per cent. So I\u2019m going to do 110 and some of those extra 10 will probably be research sketches \u2013 where the Mowat Lodge was, where the Canoe Lake Mill was. They will provide a historical backdrop to the life and times that Tom would have experienced. I\u2019m working on one of the Canoe Lake station now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marson

Marson is creating this historical sketch of the Canoe Lake train station based on research<\/p><\/div>\n

Another inspirational figure in Marson\u2019s life \u2013 and one who sparked her determination to be an artist \u2013 was Group of Seven painter A.J. Casson. Marson’s parents owned Timber Trail resort from 1965 to 1988 and one day when she was eight years old her father suggested she go down and watch an artist painting on the shores of the Oxtongue River.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know who it was. It was just some old guy painting. He was looking up the Oxtongue River painting the scene in front of him and I remember thinking that if he finds my back yard interesting enough to paint then so do I. And that was it – I made the decision then and there to be an artist and I never varied from that vision. That meeting was pivotal for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marson said she still often feels like that eight year old, fascinated by what she sees and what she can paint, and she wants to share it with others. \u201cHow cool is it that a lot of these things are still pristine and the way they were in Tom\u2019s time? There\u2019s still this landscape waiting to be discovered. I think the parks and artists are part of that rediscovery for people and I hope that it will be inspiration for people to want to respect it and take care of it for the next 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marson's

Marson’s old poster of Tom Thomson’s Northern River has been an inspiration and now hangs in her studio<\/p><\/div>\n

The works of The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson continued to inspire her throughout her arts education. \u201cI had this old poster and I took it with me when I went away to school [Georgian College]. It\u2019s pretty worn but it always meant something special to me and I never knew why. It always reminded me of my backyard (at Timber Trail) and there had always been suspicion that it had been painted outside Algonquin Park.\u201d The painting was Tom Thomson\u2019s Northern River<\/em>, which historians now believe was painted along a bend in the Oxtongue River. That spot at Timber Trail has been marked by a plaque thanks to Oxtongue Lake for Arts and Culture.<\/p>\n

As she paints, Marson is also writing exhibition proposals to find places to display this body of work when it\u2019s complete. The Town of Huntsville was the first to accept her proposal and will be sponsoring a show at the Algonquin Theatre in the summer of 2017. \u201cThey are going to use it as an anchor for a multi-faceted event around the 100th<\/sup> anniversary. The details are still in the works but it\u2019s cool that it\u2019s in my hometown but that it\u2019s also going to open it up to visitors who may not get out to Algonquin Park to see these places for themselves.”<\/p>\n

Marson has also been talking with both Algonquin Outfitters and East Central Ontario Art Association, via her former boss Ron Murdoch, about creating guided trips for artists to experience painting en plein air.<\/p>\n

But mostly she fits in painting for the project whenever she can around her full-time job at North Art Supplies. \u201cI\u2019m getting faster. I just have to pick the light, get excited about it and try to nail it as fast as I can. Everything changes but you have to stay focused on what you were really excited about and capture that moment in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow the project on Marson’s Facebook page here<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\t\t