TOM THOMSON: Wild Canada

TOM THOMSON: Wild Canada

Live Class: Tuesday 21st October 2025

6 -7:45pm GMT + 14 Days Recording Access

Taught by Lucy McGeown

Capture the vibrancy, patterns and embodied experience of being in nature in this painting class that takes inspiration from the outdoor studies of acclaimed Canadian landscape painter Tom Thomspon.

Tom Thompson was one of Canada’s foremost painters, coming to landscape painting relatively late at the age of 32 after an early career in engraving. His work for a leading Toronto commercial art and engraving firm led him to meet four of what became the Group of Seven – a progressive school of landscape painting active in Canada in the 1920s. He painted outdoors with them in his spare time, took art classes and went on painting trips at weekends and during the summer.

As a child he had developed a love of woodlands and nature and this continued in his adult life when he discovered Algonquin Park, a vast landscape of forests, bogs, lakes and rivers north of Toronto. He used broad brush strokes and a liberal application of paint and colour to capture the beauty and essence of the landscape, its changing seasons, colours and patterns.

His work made rapid progress between 1912 and 1913 and in 1914 the National Gallery of Canada began to acquire his paintings. At this point he pursued landscape art full-time, taking a studio in Toronto and making long trips to Algonquin Park to canoe and paint. His later work, including paintings such as The Jack Pine and The West Wind, are considered as some of Canada’s most iconic works. The vibrancy of his work feels contemporary and stands apart from the work of other members of the Group of Seven. His life and artistic career were devastatingly cut short when he died in a canoeing accident at the age of 39.

Looking at the small sketches Thompson painted on location, we’ll see how his vivid, expressive style achieved a raw intensity that tapped into the sublime feelings of being in nature. While Thompson used some of these sketches as preliminary pieces for larger works, the majority of them remained as small studies. In this painting class, we’ll use the intimacy of these pieces to create our own studies in oil or acrylic paint, paying attention to the way the paint is applied and the use of vibrant colour choices to capture nature’s wonder and mystery.

Suggested materials for the session:

-Acrylic or Oil paints or even gouache and watercolour

-small canvas board or suitable papers for paints you have chosen

-a selection of brushes

-rags or tissue

This class is open to all levels!

Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class

Tickets:

We suggest an amount of £20. However, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we may continue to offer our sessions on this basis whilst also giving our tutors a sustainable wage.

There is also a ticket option to "Pay It Forward" to support us and our students! We offer classes for free to those who can't afford the minimum amount (If this is you please email us to join for free). This continues to ensure our classes are available to everyone!

Once booked:

You will receive a confirmation email and be able to access information on how to join the event via your eventbrite "Online Event Page" You can access this by signing into eventbrite or creating an account using the email address that you booked with.

In the Class:

You can't be seen or heard in our classes, your audio and video are automatically turned off and there's no way these can be turned on. You can talk to us and others in the class in the chat box!

We love to see your drawings or anything else our classes inspire! You can share them with us by tagging us on instagram (@londondrawinggroup) or emailing us if you don't have socials.

IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS OR QUESTIONS PLEASE EMAIL :

hello@londondrawinggroup.com

More about out tutor:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BOOK VIA THE EVENTBRITE PHONE APP?!

We have been in touch with Eventbrite, and they have informed us that currently you cannot book tickets to online events in their app. It's very frustrating and we have been assured they are working on a solution. In the meantime, we recommend that you book tickets to our events outside of the iOS app - either via a web browser or a desktop. If you book our classes regularly we recommend deleting the eventbrite App.

And that's it!

We're really looking forward to you joining us.

Love,

LDG