Neighbours shut down a section of Westhill Road in Guelph’s west side on Canada Day. And while the party is over, there is something of a lasting legacy from the neighbourhood event.
The garage door at 6 Westhill became a kind of large-scale canvas for a mural that reproduced an iconic Canadian artistic image.
People in the neighbourhood pitched in to go big on Tom Thomson’s The West Wind, the painter’s view of a scene in Algonquin Park. The wind-bent jack pine in the foreground of the painting, done in 1917, has long been associated with Thomson’s greatest works. The painting was based on an early sketch, completed a year earlier while Thomson was a park ranger in Algonquin.
The West Wind, done 100 years ago, was Thomson’s final painting. He drowned in the same year.
The painted reproduction on the garage door is impressive due to its size, and because of the collective effort that went into it. The owners of the home were not in Monday morning, but an inscription on the murals says it was reproduced by Westhill neighbours in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary.
Thomson, along with other Canadian artists like Emily Carr and David Milne, were among the most important painters of their time. Thomson’s art and life inspired the formation of the Group of Seven.
The mural appears to have been done in something akin to a paint-by-number approach.
