Try this drunk experiment: ask an American friend to tell you who the greatest American artists of all time are. Chances are, you'll get a cornucopia of replies: Warhol, Hopper, O'Keefe, some proudly even claiming Queen Bey the honour even though we're talking visuals. Maybe especially because we're talking visual.

But ask any Canadian and you'll get a resoundingly consistent answer: the Group of Seven.

Flashback to six years ago: my sweet pushover of a husband and I have just moved in together to our own place (he made me leave our group house with all my besties. Upside, making out on the couch shamelessly). He deferred all decorating to me and my junk chic hoarding tendencies. All that he asked, in an uber-polite Canadian way is that we hang a single Group of Seven/ Lawren Harris art poster that he loves like it's his birthright, which it is, in a way. I reluctantly put it on the back of our closest door, above the laundry bin... Because I'm an asshole. Correction: because I'm an American asshole.

And that's what I thought of Lawren Harris and the others, until recently. Living in the US, I'd look at the poster and think they were a ragtag group of crap abstract 70s landscape painters on too many boring Canadian drugs.

It was only a month or two ago at a small Douglas Coupland show at MOCCA (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art) that my opinion finally evolved and I got my facts straight. Above you can see Coupland's interpretation of the Group of Seven style of landscape painting. I'm obviously partial to its modern vibe.

But while checking out the recent Basquiat exhibit at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario, with an awesome new addition by Frank Gehry in 2004), I finally saw the original Group of Seven galleries. And suddenly I got it. Its flatness has a simplicity, an ascetic quality that has been part of the national character. Simple lines, colors, textures. It's so subtle you could miss it, like it wants you to be quiet enough to catch the meaning.