I like Jim. I feel sorry for him too. He’s been having a hard time of it lately. Ever since last year’s exhibition, he’s been branded a radical. ‘Tangled Garden’ as Jim titled his painting was the target of the critics.
For reasons, beyond the understanding of all of us artists, the critics seized on his painting like a robin on a worm. Jim had the temerity to paint something different than what the critics expected and he wasn’t to be forgiven for it.
The words of the Toronto Daily Star, “Rough, splashy, meaningless , blatant, plastering and massing of unpleasant colours which seems to be a necessary evil in all Canadian art exhibitions nowadays” What do they know?
Hector Charlesworth is another. He says that a painting should be more than a shout.
“Oscar Wilde”, Charlesworth opined, “that Nature constantly imitates art. If what we have seen at the OSA Exhibition is nature, then we will all have to wear smoked glasses to appreciate the true meaning”
Thankfully, “Heck” as we now call him, neglected to comment on my paintings. If he had done so, I would have stolen his Psalter Hymnal and run an entire palette through its pages.
Tom Thomson's Last Spring 