Golden Autumn, Laurentians 1921

Clarence Gagnon gave us this landscape, Golden Autumn, Laurentians with what looks like pastel or chalk. Look at the birches rising up! I can feel Gagnon finding each tree, each branch, through touch. Colors are scribbled on, not blended or smoothed. How exciting to see this! The yellow hill shimmers behind the intense dark blue of the lower forest. I imagine him working en plein air, his senses overwhelmed by the season’s shift. Gagnon’s contemporaries, the Post-Impressionists, were similarly driven to record landscapes with loose, rapid marks. Maybe he was thinking of Van Gogh as he made this. There is an energy that you get when artists find their voice, when what they do resonates with other artists. It’s a conversation. It’s never just one person talking. It’s an ongoing exchange of ideas and inspiration across time, so many creative minds inspiring one another’s expression.