Rockglen, Saskatchewan 1983

This work is a striking watercolour depicting a railroad station house and two grain elevators on the edge of Rockglen in the first month of spring. In the background are the hills northwest of the town that mark the beginning of the Saskatchewan badlands. The painting imparts the isolation and cold temperature of this place. The crisp air makes the buildings stand out, punctuated by the snow drifts and the blue-violet sky that fades to a creamy-white colour. As might be expected for the Canadian Prairies, the image is dominated by the open sky.

This painting came about by accident. McCarthy and two companions had rented an RV to drive from Toronto to the Canadian Badlands in Alberta, where Wendy Wacko would film McCarthy painting for her 1983 documentary about the artist.  The trip was beset with adverse weather and mechanical incidents, and the forced stop in Saskatchewan “gave us four days to use, enough for a taste of prairie painting that turned out to be a real plus.”

Compositionally, Rockglen, Saskatchewan must have presented a challenge because there are few similar shapes allowing for the repetition of forms that McCarthy liked, nor could she find a zigzag pattern that recedes from the foreground to the background. She settled on the receding line of the road heading north that leads from the station house on the left to the hills in the distance. Those hills then direct viewers to the lower third of the canvas, where the blue-violet of the sky is repeated before receding into infinity. This image is an exceptional example of McCarthy’s gift for suggesting space on the canvas: “Space is one of my obsessions,” she said, “and I usually find my inspiration by looking into the distance.”  The town of Rockglen provided her with the penultimate scene in which to challenge that obsession. In many ways, this painting brings to mind the famous prairie scenes of Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956).