Lawren Harris portrayed landscapes of the Lake Superior region in many paintings, having explored it in frequent artistic journeys with fellow artists. He created a spiritual vision, a hymn to the sacredness and majesty of the nature of Canada rather than its realistic vision.

In Above Lake Superior, Harris transforms the lake, the height, the trees into sinuous shape with no sharp edges. The horizon of the water is high, and the water is calm and dark. Above it, Harris draws the clouds in blue, yellow, and white, in a succession of horizontal lines, as if the waves were in the sky. Harris gives to us, through this work, the possibility to observe his vision of the northern landscape, towards a universal vision of nature's spiritual power, crossing the naturalistic surface to a more profound reality.

Simplified forms and intense light are the distinctive marks of Lauren Harris's work and with these instruments. Harris wrote: "The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these, our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experience of oneness with the informing spirit of the whole land and a strange brooding sense of Mother Nature fostering a new race and a new age... So, the Canadian artist was drawn North."