The Fire Ranger 1920

Frank Johnston’s 'The Fire Ranger' is a landscape scene realized in earth tones, soft blues and yellows that seems to have come into being intuitively, shifting and emerging through trial and error. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Johnston to work on this canvas. He probably felt the urge to capture the vastness of nature, the sky, the clouds. In this painting, the material aspects are very important. Look at the texture. The paint is not applied in even, flat layers but in small, textured strokes. The clouds are built up with layers of yellows and browns, creating depth and volume. The landscape below shimmers with greens and blues. The small plane is there. A reminder of human presence but also a gesture of vulnerability and insignificance. Johnston was part of the Group of Seven, and you can really see his conversation with Lawren Harris and others. Artists are in an ongoing dialogue, inspiring one another's creativity. Painting, it's not just about what you see. It's about how you feel and how you express that feeling in a language that only paint can speak.