Tom Thompson inspired Landscape Art
Thomas John Thomson, painter (born 5 August 1877 in Claremont, ON; died 8 July 1917 in Algonquin Provincial Park, ON). Tom Thomson was the most influential and enduringly popular Canadian artist of the early 20th century. An intense, wry and gentle artist with a canny sensibility, he was an early inspiration for what became the Group of Seven. He was one of the first painters to give acute visual form to the Canadian landscape. His works portray the natural world in a way that is poetic but still informed by direct experience. Many of his paintings, such as The West Wind (1916–17) and The Jack Pine (1916–17), have become icons of Canadian culture. He produced about 50 canvases and more than 400 sketches in his short professional career. His legend only grew after his untimely death at the age of 39. The students in the Virtuoso program have been introduced to landscape art through Tom Thomson's paintings of Canadian landscapes. They started their project by painting a sunset-like background using watercolours on watercolour paper, applying long brushstrokes from side to side. Next following the teachers demonstration they drew the middle ground and the foreground using oil pastels and implementing a variety of lines; from straight and curved to squiggly. To finish they used scrunched tissue paper pieces for the details and their Tom Thomson inspired landscape at sunset was then complete.