Nerke, Greenland 1930

Lawren Harris made this painting, Nerke, Greenland, with confident brushstrokes in a muted palette of blues, whites, and grays. Imagine him standing there, in the cold, trying to capture this scene. I can almost feel what it was like to be him – the chill in the air, the starkness of the landscape. The paint is laid on smoothly, almost coolly, giving everything a sense of stillness. Look at the way he's handled the mountains, how they rise up like frozen giants. And those icebergs! Little shards of blue floating on the water. They remind me of Joan Mitchell's paintings – how she used color to evoke a sense of place. Harris was part of the Group of Seven, and you can see that sensibility here, that desire to capture the essence of the Canadian landscape. But it also reminds me of some of the Scandinavian painters, like Munch, who were grappling with similar themes of nature and solitude. It’s all a conversation, isn't it? Artists talking to each other across time and space, trying to make sense of the world.