Additional Images

Provenance:

Kinsman Robinson Gallery, Toronto, ON
Private Collection, California, USA

Exhibited:

The Shaman's Return, Kinsman Robinson Galleries, Toronto, ON, 31 Mar - 28 Apr 1990.

Note:

Waddington’s is pleased to offer two canvases by Norval Morrisseau from the artist’s early 1990s in this auction: Ojibwa Family Motif with Tree of Knowledge, 1991 (lot 31) and Fish and Fowl Forms - Composition, 1990 (lot 32).

Paintings by Morrisseau from this period are characterised by new, brighter colours. Already in the mid-1970s Morrisseau was introducing new colours to his paintings, drawing inspiration from his involvement with the spiritual movement Eckankar, and combining this doctrine with the Anishinaabe and Christian beliefs featured in his earlier works. By the early 1990s his signature palette of copper, yellow and blue was fully realised and "conveyed the clarity of vision, lightness, and spirituality that Eckankar espouses."[1]

Jack Pollock and Lister Sinclair discuss the artist’s bright colour palette and the meaning and intentionality of the blue tones found in his canvases, stating that, “to Morrisseau, blue was often regarded as symbolising spiritual protection, […] the light blue indicating that the artist’s spirit is being guarded by day, whereas the mid blue means that it is being guarded by night. In a sense, these two colours seem to perform for him some of the guardian functions which, he tells us, belong to the totem spirits.”[2]

Light and dark shades of blue can be found in both Ojibwa Family Motif with Tree of Knowledge and Fish Fowl Forms - Composition. In Ojibwa Family Motif with Tree of Knowledge, Morrisseau achieves a striking sense of balance in this composition by mirroring the shades of blue in the clothing of the family. The Ojibwa family and the transference of knowledge is a recurring theme in Morrisseau's paintings of this period.[3]

Fish Fowl Forms – Composition brilliantly depicts Morrisseau’s use of lines: a seminal aspect of Morrisseau’s Woodland School of Art style. Often referred to by the artist as lines of communication, these lines form closed loops and united ties between the figures. Morrisseau would also incorporate internal lines to depict the inner structures of animals and humans, which is apparent in the bird and fish figures in this work. Finally, the divided circle is a common motif that Morrisseau used throughout his career and can be seen in paintings as early as the 1950s. Scholar Carmen Robertson refers to the divided circle as the dualities that exist in the artist’s view of the world.[4]

[1] Art Canada Institute, Norval Morrisseau, Life and Works by Carmen Robertson, Art Canada Institute, accessed 15 April 2024, https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/norval-morrisseau/style-and-technique/.
[2] Lister Sinclair and Jack Pollock, Art of Norval Morrisseau, (Toronto: Methuen, 1979), 58.
[3] Norval Morrisseau: Honouring First Nations, (Toronto: Kinsman Robinson Galleries, 1994, Exh. Cat), 8.
[4] https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/norval-morrisseau/style-and-technique/