Morley Station, 1928

Gainsborough Galleries, Calgary Masters Gallery, Calgary Private Collection, Alberta

MacLeod belonged to the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and the Canadian Group of Painters. In her short lifetime she showed her paintings extensively across the country with A.Y. Jackson and other members of the Group of Seven. Based in Ottawa during the 1920s, MacLeod became acquainted with anthropologist Marius Barbeau, who encouraged the artist along with Anne Savage and Florence Wyle to travel to the Skeena River in British Columbia to record First Nations’ communities and constructions before they completely disappeared. MacLeod took a trip to Alberta with Jackson and Frederick Banting in 1927, as well as a trip to the Skeena region in 1928. “Morley Station” (1928), a delightful modernist landscape, likely depicts a location where the artist stopped along her way to or from these First Nations subjects.