Discussion: Painting-O

Does anyone have a similar orienteering-related hobby as we have? For many years my wife, Sue, and I have been searching for the locations that inspired some painters of the Canadian north. The members of the Group of Seven are Canada's best known artists. The group was formed in 1920. Although they painted in cities and towns, their best known works were done in the wilderness.
Our hobby is something like photo-O. One difference is that we usually don't have a photograph but instead we have a landscape painting. However, the real difference is that often we don't know which map to find the place on. Most often the artists didn't record where they did their work. We try to find clues in the title or in the painting that might narrow things down and then search topos for similar places. Then we travel to the candidate places to see if we are correct. If so, we take a picture of what the place looks like now. We prefer to search for the places that can only be reached by canoe.
There are many painting sites known for the European masters but there were very few known in Canada. So far we have found more than 150 locations.
The following link shows two comparisons between paintings and photographs. AJ Casson's "Little Bay in the North Channel" and Franklin Carmichael's "Untitled (La Cloche Landscape)". The third image shows an old photo of Carmichael sitting on a rock sketching and the same rock today.
http://picasaweb.google.com/GHOSLOW/PaintingO?auth...
(I drew a line through the image of the painting because of copyright concerns.)
I'd be interested to hear of anyone else who has done similar things.
Jim

In 1994, en route to the US Champs in Alaska, several of us went 38 miles up the Canol Road, to find the spot mentioned in a Stan Rogers song.

In the Salmon Range at forty-eight below

Yeah, we went in June, when it was a lot more pleasant. No glittering frozen eyeballs for us! We also visited the Kopper King, and it was too creepy for us even in broad daylight.

A very interesting hobby!
I heard about this a few years ago through Mike and then found this fine collection.

Stephanie Maclean is a member of Bay Area Orienteering Club and is also an artist. She's done the artwork for several of our event t-shirts, and many of her paintings are of places used for orienteering.
http://www.black-isle.co.uk/smaclean/index.html

That is very impressive. Now I see that Mike's artistic talent is not without precedent in the family!

The closest thing I do to Jim and Sue's marvelous hobby is that I try to pick the actual shoot location of a Hollywood movie. For instance a movie may be set in Cleveland but "oh there goes a Toronto streetcar". Or "that terrain look more like the Alberta foothills than Utah". I guess that is armchair cinema-O. The biggest problem is that I have to wait until the penultimate credits to find out if I'm right.
But speaking of artists, in 1994 I commissioned two pieces of art -Gatineau woods scenes with a control marker prominent- to be awarded to the H 21 and F 21 winners of the COC. The artist is still painting landscapes in oil. http://www.galleryraymond.com/harold.htm

The upcoming movie 2012 has some footage shot on a rogaine map (during the rogaine, no less). Not sure if it's also o-mapped or not.

Gord: It was the 1996 Canadian Champs (not '94) and remains the best award I've ever won in an orienteering race. It hangs proudly in my house. Thanks so much again.

Nice to hear of orienteering artists and thank you to Leif and Gord for your comments. Movie-O is certainly similar to our hobby.
I have had far more people at presentations about this search for art sites than I ever got to my scientific talks! It is a good chance to talk about orienteering.
I am convinced that I wouldn’t have been able to find the places without the training that one gets as an orienteer. When I see a painting, I think that I visualize the scene in 3D, then try to imagine what the topo of that scene would look like. Then try to find that on a real topo. More recently Google Earth has also been a help.

>I am convinced that I wouldn’t have been able to find the places without the training that one gets as an orienteer.

Yeah but it is possible that if we hadn't started that hobby BEFORE we heard of orienteering that we would have ever done orienteering. I learned to map read from that hobby before I had ever heard of orienteering.

Ok
That's right. When we were on a lake and you refused to paddle anymore, I would give you the map and get you to find the next portage trail. You learned quickly.

In the Billygoat Results thread, JJ shows the results of his Painting-O quest. Not bad.
An update on the hobby....
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection have a website that illustrates a number of our findings and a lot of history too. Embarrassing though.

They have just started an exhibition showing 50 paintings and our photos of the same scene.
http://www.mcmichael.com/exhibitions/footsteps/cur...

This is an excellent show (yeah I'm biased) and is very much worth seeing if you are in the southern Ontario area. The McMichael Gallery not only has an impressive Canadian Art Collection but is located in a very beautiful setting and inside very large log buildings.

It was very pleasing to see my parents' show open a few days ago as it was searching for the first painting that taught me how to read a map. The first painting location we found before we knew about the sport of orienteering. Orienteering slowed the process of my parents finding these painting locations because they had to drive my sister and I to races for the next 15 years but the skills developed from orienteering then made finding more painting locations even easier.

The website link posted above is correct but the best stuff on it can be reached easier by clicking here first
http://www.groupofseven.ca/Adventures/On-The-Shoul...


Join the facebook site under construction

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=...

First came the hobby, then the show and now

the tweets: https://twitter.com/FootstepsGroup7

the facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/FootstepsGroup7

and soon the book: http://www.gooselane.com/books.php?ean=97808649290...

People might find this interesting:
http://whatsupyukon.com/article-view.cfm?ArticleID...

I am only slowly entering the 21st century so Facebook is a rather frightening experience for me. Hammer and Backwoods set up the Facebook page and the Twitter account for us.

In order to log in to Facebook we used my wife’s email address. Within minutes there were suggestions for “friends” who really were her friends. Not so surprising except that I didn’t tell Facebook my wife’s name.

Anyways we now have more than 100 “likes”. I am told that this isn’t viral. Seemed impressive to me anyways.

Our book has been printed and will be in bookstore on Oct 8.
haven't seen it yet.
We will have some to sign at the Nationals too, if you like.
I have been writing about locating a painting site on the facebook page
facebook.com/FootstepsGroup7
It is interesting that the general public seems to completely lack the ability to do this. Things that are second nature to an orienteer are like magic to others.