In the shows' catalogues from the 40s his name appears just above Harris, Lawren. Flather's work was inexplicably unpriced, as if he wasn't interested in selling his landscapes. What Flather's paintings show is the same gradual shift from realism to impressionism that occured among the Group of Seven a generation earlier. Like Varley, his brushstrokes become thick and textured. His trees evolve into feathery, Carr-like flames.
Dead snags are burnt-out candles.
Talus slopes are inverted pyramids. Like Harris, he revelled in painting blue shadows on snow and the coruscations of light on moving water. Weston's - are transformed into malevolent cocoons. But in the art world of the late 40s and early 50s, the tectonic plates of convention were shifting. The landscape painters, the impressionists, the figurative artists all soon found themselves on the wrong side of the faultline that lay between them and modern art trends.