Books Issue: Literary Art, Literally

Two books published this year connect Canadian literature and landscape painting.

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Some tensions are taken for granted – between the sexes, between young and old, between visual arts and written language. Consider American realist painter Edward Hopper’s take: “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” 

Some of us, though, love that tension. We sate ourselves on words about art. We grope after adjectives, sometimes for days, to describe a favourite painting. For people like us, there are two new books on the market – John Hartman’s Many Lives Mark This Place and an experiment in flash-fiction, The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings. 

Many Lives Mark This Place is the culmination of an ambitious five-year project by Hartman, an Ontario artist known for his expansive landscapes.

Working from photographs taken with drones, he painted 32 leading Canadian authors in a setting of their choosing. Each author first sat for a photograph in natural light.

At some point, the book became collaborative, with each writer contributing a short text about his or her chosen landscape.

Admittedly, it took time to warm to the faces and figures. I’m a huge fan of Hartman’s aerial vistas, but it felt at first like his subjects were blocking the view. 

Still, Hartman’s book is about connection – of people to place – and I was soon seduced by the gullies and ridges, of both land and flesh, painted in mud browns, arterial reds and veiny blues.

According to the introduction, a few of the writers were “quite upset” over Hartman’s portrayal. Better than flattery, the portraits are rich with gooey paint and surreal detail – both subject and background are painted with what Hartman calls an “equal density of information.” 

In Thomas King Above Chesterton Beach, for instance, elements from King’s stories – an otter, a disembodied hand, a set of infant twins – float in a strange middle-distance. Michael Winter Above Bradley’s Cove is almost entirely pink and purple, lurid but somehow sad. 

All 32 paintings are incredibly spirited and muscular, but it was the writing that twinged my nerves. Noah Richler’s description of a wedding in Sandy Cove, N.S., George Bowering’s reminiscences about his youth in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley, and David Bergen’s story of faiths lost and found on the Prairies – are deeply felt and beautiful. As Richler notes: “A place without stories is just a landscape.”

It could be that Hartman’s book is a tough act to follow, but The Group of Seven Reimagined, edited by Karen Schauber, a pairing of famous paintings with flash (or brief) fiction, is more novel but less intimate. It’s hard to mess with the utterly familiar mythology of the Group of Seven, so much credit must be given for trying.  

The book’s aim – to eschew art interpretation in favour of “flights of fancy” is interesting, but doesn’t always succeed. The best pairings are where a writer maintains some connection to the painting – Alfred DePew’s assumption of Lawren Harris’ voice, for example, or Yael Maree’s poetic description of A.J. Casson’s forest – “infinite shades of seafoam, chartreuse, lime and olive.” 

But where flights become too fanciful, and paintings are treated as mere writing prompts, all sense of connection is lost. In fairness, this approach to the Group of Seven may be exciting and refreshing to less conservative readers (Finally! Some pluck! A little audacity!) But others will mourn that here words and art remain singular, lonely entities. ■

Many Lives Mark This Place by John Hartman: Figure 1 Publishing, Vancouver, 2019.

The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings, edited by Karen Schauber: Heritage House, Victoria, 2019.

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