The Seduction of the Innocents

[Rodney C. Mackay]

Lawren Stewart Harris was a very competent abstractionist; his son was not. The evidence speaks for itself! Although he did sell his abstract paintings, his commissioned realist portraits were a better source of income. I remember his saying that those lines across the canvas had something to do with the work of Lionel Feninger, but the American abstractionist produced much less static work.

Lawren Harris had an illustrative approach to most work completed prior to, and during, World War II, although he had executed a few abstract works. His wartime illustrations of battles and those who took part in them, were watercolours which he never considered his best medium. His style, had been compared to that of his father, but Lawren S. Harris used a much cooler palette.

Harris said that "Before the war, (I did) one or two things that were pretty abstract, so I could see I was headed that way...". Perhaps, but the weight of art world interest and sales had swung against realist and surrealists by the 1950's, and almost most of the "mature painters" in Atlantic Canada were seduced away from their earlier styles at this time.