Artist Doris McCarthy is seen in her home studio in Toronto's Scarborough Bluffs neighbourhood. (Ken Jones)Seventy Doris McCarthy paintings, some of which have never been seen in public, are on display at the University of Toronto Art Centre and at the Scarborough gallery that bears the Canadian artist's name.

Titled Roughing It in the Bush, the show opened Saturday at the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.

It will run concurrently at the University of Toronto Art Centre, on the university's downtown campus, to mark McCarthy's 100th birthday.

The last living student of Canadian Group of Seven artist Arthur Lismer, McCarthy turns 100 on July 7.

Born in Alberta, McCarthy moved with her family to Toronto in 1913 and graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1930.

She taught for 40 years at Toronto's Central Technical High School.

Focused on painting

Broughton Floes in Spring Fog, a 1984 oil on canvas work by Doris McCarthy. (Toni Hafkenscheid) After retiring from teaching in 1972, she devoted herself to her painting, travelling extensively throughout Canada to find inspiration for her art.

McCarthy's work has been collected by major institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada, and is in many corporate and private collections.

In 2004, the University of Toronto at Scarborough opened the Doris McCarthy Gallery.

With McCarthy best known for her Canadian landscapes, Roughing It in the Bush includes works that depict her Scarborough Bluffs home in Toronto, her cottage north of the city in Georgian Bay and paintings from her acclaimed Arctic iceberg series.

But its focus is on lesser-known works such as her hard-edged abstracts that play with form and movement, and that have never before been shown in public.

In the 1960s, McCarthy began experimenting with abstraction and produced a number of landscapes that provide a distinct departure from her representational landscape paintings.

"I believe she'll get a new audience from it," Roughing It in the Bush curator Nancy Campbell said.

McCarthy is a recipient of the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, five honorary doctorates and an honorary fellowship from the Ontario College of Art and Design.

She has donated her home in the Scarborough Bluffs neighbourhood and an endowment for its upkeep to be used as an artist studio/sanctuary after her death.

Artist Doris McCarthy is seen painting in Grise Fjord, Nunavut in 1976.