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Camerons of the Yukon

Camerons of the Yukon illustrates Yukon artist Ted Harrison’s bold use of colourful and undulating lines that are used to break up the painting surface to reveal bright shades, fluorescent forms, and vigorous colours that create a surrealistic atmosphere. In the painting, the midnight sun hangs above the horizon and seems to be floating in the purple sky with varying shades of blue, and pink, that surround the sun as it meets the horizon. The painting captivates the Yukon landscape using brilliant colours, reduced shapes, and shortened lines to give a multilayered contrast to the landscape and sky. This painting is representative of Ted Harrison’s distinctive style in capturing in a unique way the essence of the North, its landscape and the people who live there.

Camerons of the Yukon was commissioned by former senator Ione Christensen to depict her and her parents at Fort Selkirk, Yukon, when she was a child. According to Ms. Christensen, “Fort Selkirk was a one-man (and woman, Mother) post with five dogs and a 14-foot canoe with a 10-horsepower outboard to do all the patrols between Whitehorse and Dawson and all of the Pelly River country. We were there fifteen years till it closed down in 1949 when Dad retired, and we moved to Whitehorse.”

Camerons of the Yukon reveals Harrison’s characteristic style of contrasting warm and cool colours with thick wavy lines and surreal northern landscape. The composition is full of brilliant skies, rolling hills, white-capped mountains that seem to blend into one another, and reflects a peaceful and tranquil mood. Harrison pushes the boundaries of traditional landscape painting as well as the conventions of abstract art by using sweeping lines, rhythms, lush colours, and undulating shapes. His iconic, recognizable, and unique style captures the unforgiving environment, the mysterious northern lights, long never-ending nights, and bright endless midnight sun.

Harrison’s creative process challenges assumptions that provide a contemporary vehicle for the sensitive relationship with the North as a “remote” and “wild” place. His paintings are inspired by the stark vastness and speak about finding a personal relationship with Yukon. His palette is full of psychedelic colours featuring shades of blue and a purple sun setting in an orange sky, which makes Camerons of the Yukon an example of his passion for the Yukon. Ted Harrison’s eclectic art practice has become synonymous with the North, a mythic place where the land is vast and wild, the climate harsh and uncompromising, and the people resourceful and resilient.

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Scott Marsden was the Curator, Museum Collections at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. He is currently the Curator of Community Engagement at the Inuit Heritage Trust in Iqaluit, Nunavut.