John Hartman

John Hartman: Wawataysee, 2014

Wawataysee, 2014, oil on linen, 60 x 66 inches

Wawataysee

This painting depicts the stretch of shoreline from the north side of Go Home Bay to Moose Bay, just south of Odonnel Point. Tom Thomson is painted into the landscape near the entrance to Monument Channel, where Dr. McCallum’s cottage was located. Just a little north is Band’s Island, a popular place for painters to work. The island’s outer shoreline is windswept and the Band’s were patrons. I have put a giant painting easel on their island. In the open water closer to the horizon is a tug pulling a log boom and in the lower right corner a sleigh full of logs being pulled by a team of horses to a winter drop off point. A black duck flies down to Odonnel Point. The Tadenac Club, started in the late nineteenth Century, occupies the lower right of the painting. When I lived nearby at Manitou Marina with the Trudeaus, the caretakers at the Tadenac were B.B. and Lu Robitaille. Lu became a painter and her image sits above the club.