A fifth member, Fred Varley, moved to Lynn Valley in North Vancouver in 1926 and began teaching art. They were drawn westward by the province's extraordinary scenery, dominated by verticality, clouds, the rhythmic repetition of ridges, huge rainforest trees, and dying native coastal villages. Lawren Harris, Canada's most influential artist, first brought his ideas to B.C. in 1924 when he began his regular, summer painting trips to the Rockies. The massive, glaciated mountains of B.C. dwarfed the human intruder, confirming his view that the land itself was divine. Peaks became abstract triangles, symbolic of paradise.
Clouds become emblematic, flying saucer-like ovals.
Light shafts equalled transcendence. A burnt tree stump represented death and redemption. His influence on artists in B.C., was enormous. She didn't put down her brush until shortly before her death in 1945. He affected W.P. Weston, the best-known B.C. landscape painter and art teacher of his time, who learned to simplify the overwhelming complexity of the province's terrain.