Canadian Artists from World War II to the Present: A Survey  
     
     
 
Introduction :: Pre-Contact Traditions :: Post-Contact First Nations Art: An Overview :: Arctic/Inuit Traditional Arts :: Arctic/Inuit Modern and Contemporary Arts :: Plains :: West Coast :: Eastern Woodlands :: Other Selected Contemporary First Nations Artists :: Additional Resources for First Nations Artists in Canada :: HOME
  
     
   
  Other Selected Contemporary First Nations Artists  
     
 

It is difficult to offer an overview of contemporary First Nations artists, other than to observe that many use contemporary techniques and informed social and theoretical perspectives both to produce traditionally inspired works as well as those which employ contemporary media to offer a contemporary, often pointed, social message.

Major exhibitions and publications in the 1990s are useful to gain an overview of contemporary First Nations artists in Canada: see, for example, Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives in Canadian Art (Hull: National Museum of Civilization, 1992), and Land Spirit Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1992). Both publications document the thoughtful ways in which contemporary First Nations artists are producing art in the context of a mainstream culture that does not easily understand the values that this art expresses. It is instructive to compare these publications with the 1988 book The Spirit Sings (Calgary: Glenbow Museum), which concentrated entirely on traditional native arts.

Robert Davidson (b. 1946)

Davidson, of the Haida First Nations, was born in 1946 in Hydaburg, Alaska. According to the website listed above, Davidson, a "descendant of one of the greatest Haida artists (Charles Edenshaw), and apprentice to another (Bill Reid), Robert Davidson has followed with celebrated accomplishments in carving, jewelry design, serigraphy, and argillite and metal sculpture. He also produces designs for ceremonial button blankets and contemporary fashions with artist Dorothy Grant (a collaboration acknowledged in the milestone Land, Spirit, Power exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in1992). Beyond his activities as an artist, Davidson has reintroduced and maintains a master/apprentice training system, formed a traditional Haida song and dance troupe, and has hosted several potlatches."

Davidson exhibits widely and is represented by several galleries.







Every Year the Salmon Come Back. Undated.
Silkscreen.
Dimensions not given.
Photo: Haida Gwaii Museum at Qay’llnagaay

This work demonstrates how adeptly Davidson adapts traditional imagery, with its emphasis on subtle formal relationships, to the technique of silkscreen.

Dorothy Grant (b. 1955)





Dorothy Grant is a Haida artist born in Hydaburg, Alaska in March 1955. She grew up in Ketchikan. She is a Kaigani Haida of the Raven clan from the Brown Bear house of Howkan. Dorothy apprenticed as a Haida artist with Florence Edenshaw-Davidson, an Elder. She frequently works with Davidson.

Woman’s "Killer Whale" bolero from the Feastwear line c. 1997. Collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.



According to the ROM website, Grant studied at the Helen Lefeaux School of Fashion Design in Vancouver and graduated in 1988. Grant debuted her first Feastwear collection of wearable art at the Derek Simpkins Gallery of Tribal Art in June 1989. Initially known for traditional crafts, such as button blankets, she is now celebrated for her fashion design and as an aboriginal businesswoman. She writes on her own website: "Most of my life I have been surrounded by wonderful native art. For the past 25 years I have been privileged enough to collect a fair amount of masks, baskets, jewelry, and original paintings. This has been a primary passion in my life. I am student of the art myself, and while practicing my traditional art forms of basketry weaving and button robe making I have gained a deeper understanding of the way of my ancestors. I feel connected to them when I go back to making these forms."

Artists working on the West Coast from other traditional cultures have also made a significant impact. One such artist is Demsey Bob, a Tahltan-Tlingit Artist, who has executed many masks executed in a highly original style, some of which are located in major public locations, such as the Vancouver International Airport.






Joane Cardinal Schubert (b. 1942)

Joane Cardinal Shubert, born in 1942 in Red Deer Alberta of Blood (Blackfoot) and Peigan ancestry, is known for her trenchant social critiques of racism. As the website listed below relates, "A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts since 1986, Joane Cardinal-Schubert is also a writer, curator, lecturer, poet and activist for First Nations artists and individuals engaged in the struggle for Native sovereignty. A graduate of both the Alberta College of Art (1968) and the University of Calgary (1977), Cardinal-Schubert’s painting and installation practice is prominent for its incisive evocation of contemporary First Nations experiences and condemnation of the imposition of Euroamerican religious, educational and governmental systems upon aboriginal people."



Family Birthright Date not provided. (Masters Gallery, Calgary)
Mixed media
Dimensions: 31x11 inches

In Family Birthright, Cardinal Shubert uses traditional imagery reminiscent of paintings on tipis—horses, tipis themselves, images of other animals and outlines of people—to create a mood of nostalgia. The colors are intense and the mood lyrical—until one begins to think more deeply, and realizes that the "birthright" has been betrayed.


Jane Ash Poitras (b. 1951)





Born in 1951 in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, of Chipewyan and Cree ancestry, Poitras lost her mother to tuberculosis at the age of five and was then adopted by a German-Canadian widow. As the website above notes, "For the next twenty years her Native ancestry was denied. Poitras earned first a degree in microbiology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In 1981, she reconnected with her ancestral community, and subsequently chose to study art full-time, completing an M.F.A in 1985 at Columbia University in New York. Central to her work is an exploration of the impact of colonialism, both past and present, as well as the political and spiritual strength of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Poitras’s expressionistic mixed media-assemblaged works employ a postmodern vocabulary which reflect her advanced formal training and place her at the forefront of a new generation of Native artists."

Red Earth Buffalo, Blood 1992 (Royal Bank Financial Group Corporate Art Collection)
Mixed media on canvas
91.44 x 121.92 cm

In her paintings, such as this one, Poitras typically combines photographs and imagery taken from traditional native cultures with an overlay of vibrant colors. The overall effect is of a collage, which is intended to evoke the ways that memory overlays images in our own minds. The images powerfully evoke themes of loss and transformation—yet also reclaiming and celebrating that which can still be reawakened.

Poitras is typical of those First Nations artists who confidently take a place within mainstream culture while simultaneously being aware of the ways in which mainstream culture has threatened and damaged native cultures. It is significant here that this work is held by a major corporate collection.


Faye Heavyshield (b. 1953)

Faye Heavyshield was born on the Kainah (Blood) reserve in southern Alberta, the third youngest in a family of twelve. She came from a large and stable family: her father managed the band ranch. She spent much time with her grandmother, who imparted traditional stories to her. She remembers childhood positively and felt she was a "cherished" child. Her family was Roman Catholic but she was still told traditional native stories. At the age of 17, she attended a residential school some forty miles from her home, a painful event that she later explored in her art (residential schools were common in Canada until the 1960s, and were frequently associated with having discouraged students from speaking their native languages.)

She attended the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, and thereafter the University of Calgary, where in 1986 she received a BFA. Thereafter she became known for using abstracted sculptural forms to relate poignant social messages.

Untitled Sculpture. 1992 (National Gallery of Canada)
Wood, cement, acrylic
190.5 cm diameter installed; elements: 244.5 x 13.5 cm diameter each
Purchased 1993

On the National Gallery website listed above, Heavyshield is quoted as having said in 1992: "One of my earliest and strongest memories is that of my father skinning a deer: the beauty of the animal’s eyes, serene in death, the smell of blood, the crackle of fat as the hide was peeled away, and the great taste of the meal my mother cooked. This image and others I saw later in statues of Jesus on the cross, in the architecture of the old homes—tepee poles before the skin/canvas (covered them) and structures left over from the Sundance, in the bodies of the old. When I began my formal art training, these influences surfaced in the form of biomorphic images, skeletal armatures with vestiges of "flesh", using architectural and figurative language. Monochromatic, after the solitude and simplicity of the prairie. Sometimes building the surface up and then working back from there, peeling the layers."


Gerald McMaster (b. 1953)



Gerald McMaster is an artist, critic, and curator who uses "Indians and Cowboys" themes to make ironic, informed, derisory commentary on relations between First Nations and non-native cultures. His underlying message: work against stereotypes.

Born on the Plains Cree Red Pheasant Reserve near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Gerald McMaster studied at the Institute of the American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. According to the McMichael Canadian Art Gallery, "In his work, the artist explores history from a First Nations perspective, often employing a strong sense of humour as a form of social commentary. In addition to a successful art career, McMaster has held the position of Curator of Contemporary Indian Art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, in Ottawa, since 1981."

Trick or Treaty, 1990 (McMichael Canadian Art Collection)
Acrylic and oil pastel on matt board
116.0 x 96.0 cm
Purchase 1991

Again citing the McMichael gallery, "Trick or Treaty is an excellent example of McMaster use of tongue-in-cheek humour to raise the awareness of past political issues that have involved First Nations people. McMaster takes a satirical look at Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald who has been criticized for his policy-making and disregard for the people. Macdonald’s face is painted to resemble a clown or joker. The linguistic play of the text ‘Trick or Treaty’ and "Have I got an act for you" recalls Macdonald’s paternalistic, right-wing attitude and trickery involving treaty agreements between the government of Canada and First Nations people."

In sum, traditional First Nations artists in Canada have left an important material legacy for contemporary people, and artists, both native and non-native, have continued to be inspired by the techniques and subjects explored by First Nations artists of the past. As for today’s First Nations artists, they refuse (rightly) to be pigeon-holed or ghettoized into a single category, and instead use the legacy of the past to create new and living art that challenges as well as delights.		  
     
     
 
Introduction :: Pre-Contact Traditions :: Post-Contact First Nations Art: An Overview :: Arctic/Inuit Traditional Arts :: Arctic/Inuit Modern and Contemporary Arts :: Plains :: West Coast :: Eastern Woodlands :: Other Selected Contemporary First Nations Artists :: Additional Resources for First Nations Artists in Canada :: HOME