Lawren Harris [1885-1970] Island, MacCullam Lake, 1921"We were told, quite seriously, that there never would be a Canadian art because we had no art tradition."
"Beauty is a living abiding presence completely untouchable by all the devices of man, such as moral codes, creeds, intellectual analysis, games and cliches, the acquisitive instinct, or lust for anything whatsoever."
"I myself incline to drift, to accept a lesser situation rather than strive for a greater, and yet, I know that character in life and art is only made by an effort that is quite beyond one's ordinary everyday acceptance of things as they are."
"Art is not an amusement, nor a distraction, nor is it, as many men maintain, an escape from life. On the contrary, it is a high training of the soul, essential to the soul's growth, to its unfoldment. "
"The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing; it is the reduction of all life to a perfectly composed and dynamic miniature – a microcosm where there is perfect balance of emotion and intellect, stress and strain resolving itself, form rhythmically poised in three dimensions."
"I don't suppose you do know precisely what you are after. I don't think in the creative process anyone quite knows. They have a vague idea - a beckoning, an inkling of some truth - it is only in the process that it comes to any clarity."
An external link to more Harris quotations here.
An earlier Tom Thompson entry on this blog here.
