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Lawren Harris

Lawren Harris Books

Painter

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“Through our own creative experience we came to know that the real tradition in art is not housed only in museums and art galleries and in great works of art; it is innate in us and can be galvanized into activity by the power of creative endeavor in our own day, and in our own country, by our own creative individuals in the arts. We also came to realize that we in Canada cannot truly understand the great cultures of the past and of other peoples, until we ourselves commence our own creative life in the arts. Until we do so, we are looking at these from the outside.”

Art
Book:The Best of the Group of Seven
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“No man can roan or inhabit the Canadian North without it affecting him, and the artist, because of his constant habit of awareness and his discipline in expression, is perhaps more understanding of its moods and spirit than others are. He is thus better equipped to interpret it to others, and then, when her has become one with its spirit, to create living works in their own right, by using forms, colors, rhythms and moods, to make a harmonious home for the imaginative and spiritual meaning it has evoked in him.”

Art
Book:The Best of the Group of Seven
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“The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these, our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experience of oneness with the informing spirit of the whole land and a strange brooding sense of Mother Nature fostering a new race and a new age... So the Canadian artist was drawn North.”

Art
Book:The Best of the Group of Seven
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“Art is the distillate of life, the winnowed result of the experience of a people, the record of the joyous adventure of the creative spirit in us toward a higher world; a world in which all ideas, thoughts, and forms are pure and beautiful and completely clear, the world Plato held to be perfect and eternal. All works that have in them an element of joy are records of this adventure.”

PeopleWorldArtIdeasBeautifulFormJoySpiritPerfectResultsCreativeClearRecordsAdventureHigherPureElementsEternalArt IsPlatoJoyousCreative Spirit
Author:Lawren Harris
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“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.”

ArtFormThreePerfectEmotionBalanceArt IsFunctionStressIntellectPrimariesDimensionsStrainLiving ThingsReductionMiniaturesMicrocosmPerfect BalanceThree Dimensions
Author:Lawren Harris
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“Through our own creative experience we came to know that the real tradition in art is not housed only in museums and art galleries and in great works of art; it is innate in us and can be galvanized into activity by the power of creative endeavour in our own day, and in our own country, by our own creative individuals in the arts.”

KnowsArtRealCountryPastCultureIndividualRealizingCreativeActivityArt IsTraditionCanadaWorks Of ArtEndeavorMuseumsInnateGreat WorkGalleryCreative LifeArt Galleries
Author:Lawren Harris
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