Although it is eighty years old, this film manages, in a mere two reels, to present not only a thumbnail sketch of the development of Canadian painting, but a very intimate look at one of its major exponents, A. Y. Jackson. Showing how he works out of an artist's studio in Toronto, travels yearly to the Canadian Shield region in Ontario to do sketches of the virgin landscape and then to rural Quebec to capture the pastoral environs of the agricultural working villages there, it presents a thoroughly refreshing approach of how an artist tries to respond to the world around him. As Jackson himself says right to the camera: 'The idea is not to replicate nature. It is to respond to one's impression of it in order to represent the feelings it gives rise to.' A very quintessential film from the NFB, which in itself, like this film, is a truly unique Canadian phenomenon.
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