Gagnon was a painter and a printmaker. Like his contemporaries in the Group of Seven, Clarence Gagnon longed to dissociate himself from an academic tradition in painting and was interested in creating a national art, although not one based on the untamed wilderness. Gagnon’s idea of “national” was rooted in his love of the people and the land of Quebec, as reflected in his depictions of cultivated landscapes, in which nature has been transformed by agriculture and human settlements.