Patricia Morley, “Kurelek’s Sudbury Diaries,” “Literature and the Visual Arts Special Issue of Canadian Literature,” Issue 113-114, Summer/ Autumn 1987, pages 264-65
The town of Coniston is located about ten kilometers from Sudbury. Patricia Morley explains that the Northern Ontario landscape was dear to William Kurelek as it connected with his religious faith. The terrain reminded him “of the Judean wilderness where Christ fasted for forty days.” Writing to his wife Jean during his second visit to the area in 1966, Kurelek conveyed his understanding that he could not make a great deal of his work “openly religious as I would like because then they wouldn’t be saleable.”
However, Kurelek wrote further that he considered including subtle objects or notations within his compositions which would not immediately draw attention. “I think I’ll try slipping in religious symbols into them so that a prospective buyer is not bothered by them.” True to his word, Kurelek painted “Geese Flying South, Coniston, Ontario” during this visit and the scene features the inclusion of a tiny crown of thorns in the lower right corner, blending within the sculpted rocky foreground upon initial examination.
During the trip, Kurelek forgot to bring along two of his usual tools of creation, the painter relating the error and resulting challenges: “I had quite a bit of trouble rendering fog because I forgot my atomizer. Another thing I forgot to bring is sandpaper for sharpening my razor blades for scratching our highlights and rendering grassy areas... [The terrain] has many round boulders of various tints that make them look somewhat like jelly bean candies. I took artists licence to heighten the colours a bit...If I wanted to be fanatically precise I could spend a whole day working on a piece of rock no bigger than I could hold in my hand.”
