Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ucalgary 2014 Patenaude Troy
Ucalgary 2014 Patenaude Troy
2014-08-15
Patenaude, T. R. (2014). Decolonizing the Story of Art in Canada: A Storied Approach to Art for
an Intercultural, More-Than-Human World (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary,
Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25532
http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1684
Downloaded from PRISM Repository, University of Calgary
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
by
Troy Patenaude
A THESIS
CALGARY, ALBERTA
AUGUST, 2014
Abstract
The master narrative dominating the field of Canadian art history has continually
privileged Eurocentric, colonialist ways of knowing. Many art historians and critics have
called for a new story, but nothing to date has been proposed. This dissertation marks
the first attempt at re-envisioning the story of art in Canada. It enacts a broader and
encounters.
develop a new approach that I call the storied approach. This approach acknowledges
that our art and how we talk about it is, and occurs first within the context of, a story.
The storied approach takes seriously that stories animate our lives. It recognizes the
performative power of art, and not just its representational quality. It recognizes the
phenomenological root of art and story not as the social world alone, but as our more-
than-human world within which we circulate. And it draws on the most salient features of
postcolonial criticism, while also acknowledging contributions from our colonial past
(and present).
In this vein, I interweave story and other voices complementing that of the
conventional art historian’s/critic’s while, first, bringing the storied approach to bear on
the art and criticism of Lucius O’Brien, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, and
Paul-Émile Borduas. This is not because I consider these three to be the most important
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artists in Canada, but because these artists have already been privileged as central
various members of an art audience. This allows the stories unfurling through our
ground up, here. This larger, living story, we find, is and always has been an
indigenously oriented one. European art practices and ideologies have been and are
animated by, and nested within, this indigenously oriented story of here, not the other
way around.
iv
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to all the artists and art lovers who inspired me,
and agreed to participate with such grace and enthusiasm in this project. I would
Peter von Tiesenhausen, Alex Janvier, Mark Lawes, Tanya Harnett, and Dawn Marie
Marchand. I feel honoured that throughout various stages of this project our working
relationship has deepened into a friendship. I look forward to the possibility of sharing in
our important work in the future. Many others along the way had to put up with my
incessant hounding for weeks before we were finally able to settle on mutually-
agreeable times for interviews, paperwork, and meetings. Although I cannot name all of
these people here, I am forever indebted to your kindness, generosity, and openness in
sharing/co-creating your beautiful art stories with me. I myself have been touched,
moved, and inspired by them, and pray that I have done them justice here.
My sincere thanks goes out to my PhD supervisors, Frits Pannekoek and David
Mitchell. Your time, help, and encouragement throughout this entire doctoral process,
and especially during my editing stages, was indispensable. Thank you for your
calmness, guidance, and always managing to make things seem more achievable and
doable than I myself sometimes believed them to be. I also thank the rest of my
examining committee members for their well-placed questions, thoughtful feedback, and
v
words of encouragement: Betty Bastien, Tamara Seiler, Aritha van Herk, and Gerald
McMaster.
I am also deeply grateful for the financial support received at various times for
this project from the university’s Department of Communication and Culture, the family
and friends of Carl O. Nickle, Alberta Natural Gas Co. Ltd., the Province of Alberta
Advanced Education Endowment Fund, the Pepsi Bottling Group, and various personal
sponsors. I also offer up gratitude to the various research helpers and contacts I had at
various galleries, museums, and archives along the way, especially Jessica Stewart with
Although much of this project may at first seem to aspire to live without
conventional Eurocentric art history all together, this is not the case. I challenge many
Canadian art historians throughout this dissertation, but not because I think their work is
of no value. Rather, I do this because I ultimately want the core of their projects to
succeed. That is, I recognize that embedded within both our stories is a profound love
and passion for the arts and their crucial role in our societies. I deeply honour this
relationship most and merely hope to enhance it so even more wonders and gifts may
begin to be glimpsed through encounters with our art. I acknowledge that the story I
begin to tell here is only possible because of your stories. In this vein, I wish to thank
some of the important Canadian art historians upon whose shoulders I humbly stand,
and whose stories have helped animate and deepen my own in various ways: Dennis
Reid, J. Russell Harper, Tom Hill, Gerald McMaster, Marilyn J. McKay, John O’Brian,
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Peter White, Ruth B. Phillips, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Leslie Dawn, Terrence Heath,
Roald Nasgaard, Virginia Berry, Anna Hudson, Anne Newlands, David Burnett, and
Patricia Halkes.
The work and stories of many other scholars and researchers have been
thank: Jo-ann Archibald, David Abram, Bill Plotkin, Arthur W. Frank, Alan Paskow,
Barbara Bolt, Leanne Simpson, Taiaike Alfred, Betty Bastien, Marie Battiste, James
This dissertation was written within curvatures of time and space ever unfurling
into the storied landscapes now known as Vancouver Island, the B.C. Rockies, and the
western prairies. I am fully aware that while within these animate locales I was walking
within very old footsteps, and that nothing I could have thought or written in these
places could have ever come from me alone. As such, I thank Mother Earth and the
larger story always encompassing me within the particular rhythms of these places. I
also humbly thank the Saanich and Cowichan peoples and ancestors, the Ktunaxa
peoples and ancestors, and the Nakoda and Siksikaitsitapi and ancestors, for accepting
me into the above places, and care-taking them for millennia so that they could help
breathe life into our awarenesses here in the myriad ways that they continue to do.
grandparents—Lillian, Leo, Chuck, Irene, Bob, and George—and all of our relatives and
ancestors, from the bottom of my heart. In walking your paths with so much strength,
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love, hardship, and authenticity, you carry me in mine. I am forever grateful for the
endless support, patience, and guidance you show and have shown me. I hope this
work is truthful, kind, and good for our family. May I continue to walk in this more-than-
human world as you have taught me: gently, with my heart in my feet. And Sarah, you
were exactly the inspiration I needed to get this project finally finished. For this and so
much more I am forever indebted to you. Thank you for stepping into this beautiful story
with me after so long. I deeply cherish any time I get to walk, or dance in it with you.
oushtawyawk pour lee vyeu chee awpachihayakook, li zhen chee kishnamawachik pour
li tawn ki vyaen.
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Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….……………..ii
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………..iv
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………viii
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………….ix
List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………xi
PROLOGUE………………………………………….……………………….………..…………..1
EPILOGUE…………………..…………………………………………………….……………398
The Story of Art in Canada……………………………………….…………………398
A Brief Word on Aboriginal Art in Canada………………………………………….405
Directions for Future Research…………………………………..…………………417
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………423
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..456
Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………498
xi
List of Illustrations
FIGURE 1. Aaron Paquette, Transformation, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 35.6 x 27.9 cm.
Private Collection…………………………………………………………………….150
FIGURE 2. Map of southern Ontario with key places mentioned in this dissertation. Troy
Patenaude…………………………………………………………………………….169
FIGURE 4. Lucius O’Brien, Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel, 1887.
Watercolour over graphite on wove paper, 35.8 x 51.5 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto (13483)………………………………………………………………………194
FIGURE 5. Lucius O’Brien, View from Pinnacle Rock, Eastern Townships, 1873.
Watercolour on paper, 33.0 x 45.7 cm. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s
University, Kingston, ON. Gift of the Estate of Mrs. R.F. Segsworth, 1944
(00-266)……………………………………………………………………………….196
FIGURE 6. Lucius O’Brien, Lords of the Forest, 1874. Watercolour on paper, 74.3 x 49.9
cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of the Government of Ontario, 1972
(72-19)…………………………………………………………………………………200
FIGURE 7. Unknown artist after Princess Louise, View from the Platform Looking Down
Upon the Town and Harbour, 1882. Wood engraving on paper, 19.3 x 12.8 cm.
From “Québec, Pictures from my Portfolio,” Good Words 23 (1882): 219.
Courtesy of Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University……………………………204
FIGURE 8. Lucius O’Brien, View from the King’s Bastion, Québec, 1881. Oil on canvas,
91.6 x 61.0 cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014
(405305)……………………………………………………………………………….205
FIGURE 9. Lucius O’Brien, Québec from Point Levis, 1881. Oil on canvas, 56.1 x 112.0
cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014
(404834)……………………………………………………………………………….206
FIGURE 10. Lucius O’Brien, Kakabeka Falls, Kamanistiquia River, 1882. Oil on canvas,
83.9 x 121.7 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4255)…………………..210
xii
FIGURE 11. William Armstrong, Kakabeka Falls and Portage, 1871. From Canadian
Illustrated News 4.15 (7 October 1871): 232-33. Courtesy Thunder Bay Historical
Museum Society (976.100.1F)……………………………………………………..214
FIGURE 12. Lucius O’Brien, Sunrise on the Saguenay, Cape Trinity, 1880. Oil on canvas,
90.0 x 127.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (113)……………………228
FIGURE 13. William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, 1795/c.1805. Planographic colour
print with watercolour, pen, and ink. 43.1 x 53.6 cm. Tate Gallery, London……242
FIGURE 14. Mildred Valley Thornton, Manitouwassis, 1929. Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 66.0
cm. Private collection………………………………………………………………..270
FIGURE 15. Mildred Valley Thornton, Mary George, “Old Mary”, c.1943. Oil on board,
50.8 x 35.6 cm. Private collection………………………………………………….270
FIGURE 16. Mildred Valley Thornton, The Touchwood Hills, c.1930. Oil on canvas, 76.1 x
91.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of J.M. Thornton, Vancouver,
1971 (16858)………………………………………………………………………….271
FIGURE 17. Mildred Valley Thornton, Across the Inlet, n.d. Oil on board, 24.8 x 32.4 cm.
Private collection……………………………………………………………………..272
FIGURE 18. Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1916-17. Oil on canvas, 120.7 x 137.2 cm.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (3295)……………………………………………..278
FIGURE 19. Paul-Émile Borduas, L’étoile noire, 1957. Oil on canvas, 162.5 x 129.5 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montreal. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gérard Lortie
(1960.1238)…………………………………………………………………………..329
FIGURE 20. George Simon, Shamanic Signs Series [Fertility Petroglyph], 2006. Acrylic
on paper, 55.0 x 35.0 cm. Private Collection…………………..………………….339
FIGURE 21. Peter von Tiesenhausen, Ship, 1993. Woven willow, rocks, and trees. 33.5 x
6.1 x 4.9 m. Demmitt, Alberta……………………………………………………….355
FIGURE 22. Heather Shillinglaw, Medicine Pouches, 2009. Mixed media (acrylic, seed
beads, leather, drapery, gels, romance novels, sewing patterns) on canvas, 50.8
x 40.6 cm. Private Collection.……………………………………………………….359
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FIGURE 23. Chris Flodberg, Double Image Catharsis II, 2005. Oil on canvas, 137.2 x
106.7 cm. Private Collection…………….…………………………………………..363
FIGURE 24. Chris Flodberg, Late Summer Reflections, c.2004. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x
152.4 cm. Location unknown………………………………………………………..376
PROLOGUE 1
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PROLOGUE
Indigenous scholars Graham Smith and Margaret Kovach have argued for the
This prologue will introduce not only information by which the reader can make sense of
the story to follow, but it will also introduce me, the storyteller. I am an integral part of
this research process, which cannot be separated from who I am. The use of the
pronoun “I” here (and throughout this dissertation), reflects this awareness, as well as—
relationship with the reader.2 This will not only help to establish a relationship between
the reader and the story to follow, but also help link the research and story to the
everyday lives of people and communities around me. It will, I hope, cultivate an
awareness of the link between freedom and responsibility, academia and communities,
father is Métis and his ancestors come from the land and nations of the Anishinabeg
and Wendat peoples in central/northern Ontario, where I was born, and where they
were intermixed with European (mostly French and Scottish) lineages over the years. I
PROLOGUE 2
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can trace these roots in what is now called Canada back for over 330 years. Moreover, I
continue to walk in the footsteps of my Métis ancestors, particularly those from the
lumbermen with “roots in the frontier of the Upper [Great] Lakes.”4 This community grew
up around the “wilderness home” of my ancestors, one of the “Big Four” pioneer fur
traders who helped establish what is now called Penetanguishene on Georgian Bay.5
Today, my own life work, like that of my ancestors, includes being a bilingual wilderness
home in the main ranges of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Here, I also share with
people ancestral skills—such as friction fire, flint knapping, cordage and basket making
—as well as help facilitate cultural and intercultural sharing programs with various
Indigenous Elders and community leaders. Many of the skills and life-ways my Métis
ancestors required to live in their nature-based community were passed down from
My mother’s parents are the children of European immigrants who came from the
northern lands of Great Britain. Although this branch of my ancestry has only been in
Canada for a few generations, I honour both my Métis and British-Canadian ancestors
and have also lived in England (and other parts of Europe), for many years during my
early days of graduate study. Like many Métis people over the generations in Canada,
PROLOGUE 3
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my ancestors were eventually “forced to choose between being either White or First
Nation,” especially by the end of the nineteenth century.6 Out of necessity, therefore, we
came to be largely raised within the traditions of our non-Aboriginal relatives. The
lineages, stories, and ceremonies of my Métis and First Nations ancestors were not
known or discussed at all as I was growing up, even though I was raised almost
On the one hand, I may be seen as one of those problematic types of people in
Canada who, according to Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, can stand in the way of a
government efforts to eliminate indigenous nations as political forces.”7 But on the other
hand, whether my “Aboriginal” status is strictly state defined from the top down (which is
Alfred’s issue), or not, this heritage means much more to me than just the ability to
Furthermore, to put it simply, I choose not to cut myself off from my ancestors. It makes
me very sad to think about the fact that some of my ancestors were forced to have to do
this at one time, and felt they needed to hide a part of who they were in order to have a
better life. However “far back” in linear time that may have been is irrelevant to me
because it is, regardless, a link in the chain that brought me here, makes me who I am,
and is, therefore, a very real aspect of now. I choose not to perpetuate the cycle of
This mixed heritage, for me, has far more to do with: (1) my learning about who I
am in my fullness, and in relation to the continually living and diverse world around me;
and (2) to healing the unresolved issues of my ancestors, who are all still alive, with
much yet to contribute today, through me and the ways in which I live my life from the
ground up. This dissertation is one of the contributions I have to share from this “place,”
faulting “Aboriginal” people like me, per se. His issue, rather, is with what he regards as
an arrogant, top-down, colonial system and mentality in Canada that allows me to be, in
are much more allies in a decolonization process. My story here, however, emphasizes
less the role of the top-down political structure itself, and more that of the common
ground beneath all our feet: the living, breathing, earth. Accounting for the overarching
and Euro-Canadian cultures. Focusing all our attention here, however, can also conceal
the equally-present, more universal connection and similarities between Indigenous and
Western peoples, despite the differences. Such holism, as Alfred points out, is also the
Original Instruction of the Tekani Teioha:te (Two Row Wampum),9 and importantly
includes both social and ecological systems, themselves interdependent with each
other.
PROLOGUE 5
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For almost twenty-five years now, since my family’s continuing westerly migration
into the Rocky Mountains (we have been in Alberta for over thirty years), I have lived out
in the forests and mountains, completely off-the-grid, for at least six months each year. I
have learned, by necessity, about the work and practicalities of living on the land in a
respectful and reciprocal way. This is my home. I have also learned to share it in various
ways with people from all cultures—Indigenous and non-Indigenous, through my life’s
work. Almost every day of my life I get to experience how humans interact with the
more-than-human world, and learn about the myriad ways in which this relationship
matters in the lives of all peoples, wherever “home” is to them. I have come to the
awareness that an element of this connection between peoples is rooted in all of our
ideologies, and whatever the stories, that we subsequently use to make intellectual
“sense” of it. In this way, the natural world is and always has been all peoples’ greatest
teacher and healer. Indeed, some peoples have forgotten about this original
relationship, emphasizing and living instead through ideologies (one kind of story), that
seem ever separate and outside of it, even when trying not to be. However, as cultural
ecologist and environmental philosopher, David Abram, has shown, the ever-shifting,
pulsing, “metamorphic” depths of the earth, are always “opened to us, still, by our
animal senses” and bodily participation in it.10 It is impossible for this not to be the case
—we have bodies; we have to breathe in the shifting invisible air; we also have to give it
back to the world; we have feet and have to move on the ground. It has even been
PROLOGUE 6
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demonstrated that our “global culture of the internet and the cosmopolitan culture of the
book both depend, for their integrity, upon the place-based conviviality of a thriving oral
culture [the face-to-face sharing of living stories that are not written down, and which
give form to our instinctive reciprocity between our senses and the sensuous earth].”11
Contrary to what some seem to believe today, this human relationship with the
more-than-human world did not just suddenly (or not-so-suddenly) end for all Western
and Westernized people, while it continued alive and well for everyone else. Because
the living earth is always opened up to our animal senses, whether we choose to
acknowledge it or not, there have been people from the West, despite the strong
ideological currents working against them, who have been able to glimpse and come
back into awareness with this fundamental relationship in their lives in as much a way
possible at the time. Rather than just a simple linear progression from primitive
connection with the earth to increased disconnection from it through the progress of
Western science and technology, I see the human-nature relationship as ebbing and
flowing with more circularity and nuance, within individual lives, communities, and ages,
even in the West. Of course, at some stages in this unfolding story (perhaps even more
frequently than not), humans and the more-than-human world have seemed
between. On closer look, however, there have also been occasions in Western lives,
spirituality, philosophies, and arts where this has not been the case, where the chasm
has not been so wide, nor so deep, and definitely not so impassable.12
PROLOGUE 7
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In Canada, Indigenous peoples (as they have everywhere), are and have largely
always been aware of this interdependent and participatory relationship. There is also
another group of people here, however, who have been much less discussed in such a
phenomenological way, even though they have persistently exemplified a shifting and
storied relationship with the more-than-human world: our artists. The linkage between
Canadian art—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal—and the human relationship with the land
has been well documented, and nature is generally considered to be the quintessential
home where aesthetic concerns, creativity, the social-ecological power of beauty, and a
storied existence were not just intellectual pursuits, but a way of life. It amazes me,
however, that when reading through the field of Canadian art historical literature the
with paint brushes. In such a story, their ideological inheritance almost always trumps
their living, breathing interaction with the sensuous world around them through their
bodies; their capability (not always actualized), of storying (with) the local earth; and of
“tapping the primordial wellspring of culture, replenishing the practice of wonder that lies
at the indigenous heart of all culture.”13 The story to follow is about precisely this. It
Canadian artists’ stories, and awaken the imagination of our bodies within the animate
In the Spring of 2010, I got my first opportunity to meet and talk with one of
Canada’s most important painters, Dene Suline/Saulteaux artist, Alex Janvier. I was
nervous, intimidated, and fumbling over my words way more than I would have liked,
interestingly towards the topic of love. I mentioned off-handedly that maybe the story of
my research, then, could be characterized as ultimately a love story about art in the
and think: “hmmm, it must be a short story,” he said with a chuckle.14 Janvier has been
doing this a lot longer than I have, so, indeed, there is a truth to this, I know. But I would
also like to start changing this story. I believe it is time. For without art and its stories, it
becomes exceedingly more difficult to really know our own life story, nor can we ever
CHAPTER ONE:
INTRODUCTION
In 1973, Canadian art historian Dennis Reid opened his important contribution to
of all the arts in Canada, painting is the one that most directly presents the
Canadian experience. Painters in Canada have consistently reflected the
moulding sensibility of the age: a history of their activities inevitably describes the
essence of our cultural evolution.15
While I agree that visual artists in Canada have told and do collectively tell the story of
“the Canadian experience” and “the essence of our cultural evolution,” I am not
convinced that their story, as it has been generally encapsulated by many art historians
over the decades, comes close to grasping this experience in its fullness. In a
artist and curator Jeff Thomas, Hudson expressed my sentiment with a powerful
colonial history, she realized that: “I was really looking for a way out [of this crisis]...this
canon wasn’t speaking to me either. It didn’t seem to represent who I felt I was” (my
emphasis).16 She proceeded to describe how she had to learn “to trust in the personal,”
and allow herself “to look at historical works imaginatively.”17 The discipline of art history,
she recognized, “takes that sense of imagination away.”18 Thomas, on the other hand,
as an Indigenous person, was always raised within a richly storied life, and with an
CHAPTER ONE 10
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awareness for his responsibility “to tell [his] own story.” He was also always made aware
of his ancestral history and how it evolved and evolves through present-day actions and
behaviours. In their words, Thomas already “came from that way [of imagination and
story].”19 Hudson, however, “had to learn it.” She did so, she says, by learning how to
exploring Canadian art history through a lens more beholden to Indigenous ways of
knowing than European ones. It explores some aspects of Canadian art and its history
by unlearning the discipline a bit, then allowing the art that has emerged here to breathe
in its fullness—with imagination, life, holistic depth, and dynamic synergy. It opens up
the field of Canadian art history to voices beyond those of the conventional Western art
historian and theorist in Canada. Not in an attempt to resolve contests, or re-finalize art
in Canada within what is merely another bland oneness, but to welcome a proliferation
of possibilities and “have some effect on whether and how long people listen to each
other’s stories and how open they are to those stories.”21 It argues that the discipline of
Canadian art history, particularly its branch of more evaluative art criticism, would
greatly benefit from a work that emphasizes a more cross-cultural approach than is
often allowed by the dominant story of visual art in Canada. It proposes that a “storied”
Canada, this dissertation aspires toward another story of art. This other story would
compliment our mainstream story so that we are no longer limited by a master narrative
CHAPTER ONE 11
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that continues to reinforce and perpetuate a colonial history, a story that for many
decolonization. I will return to this concept in my list of definitions below. For now, suffice
it to say that this re-envisioned story of art will be able to account for our colonial history,
so that we can be ever aware of it and how it is evolving, but it will not be dominated or
inevitably determined by it. Nor will it be shaped top-down by its abstracted Eurocentric
image. As Okanagan artist and educator Jeanette Armstrong reminds us, “lies need
[but] without furthering division and participation in the same racist measures” (my
every time. Conversely, the re-envisioned story of art in Canada here will be more like,
in the words of Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew, “a shared narrative of our collective
reality (past and present).”23 It will be a story, in other words, that can balance multiple
truths, or more to the point: performatively tell the truth that there are multiple truths.24
I base the storied approach to art in Canada on the important work of Stó:lō
storyteller and educator Jo-Ann Archibald, and socio-narratologist Arthur W. Frank. The
disciplinary boundary lines of Canadian art history have, even when trying not to,
consistently undermined the full power that Indigenous ways of knowing can and do
art in Canada does not just point out some more instances in Canadian art history
where Aboriginal artists have been excluded, misunderstood, or have adopted Western
art practices. Rather, it empowers Aboriginal voices, ways of knowing, and arts in the
(re)telling of a completely new kind of story altogether. One that is necessarily far less
Mainstream Canadian art history, in primarily using “the nation state” (itself a
Eurocentric concept), as its point of departure, can too easily obscure ways Canadian
art has developed across boundaries of places and times existing outside the dominant
Eurocentric art historical paradigm. Doing so, it often fails to fully account for the
potential of art in Canadian contexts, which are rich in cultural and ecological life and
diversity, and which, at least in part, also exist outside Eurocentric knowledge
Britain, comparative studies historian, Tim Fulford, and literary eco-critic, Kevin
Hutchings, introduced us to what they called “the Indian Atlantic.”25 They characterize
this as the complex, enriching, and shifting cross-cultural relationship between Britain,
Canada, and USA in the early nineteenth century, where Indigenous peoples played a
mutual, crucial, and active (though unequal) role in shaping Canadian and transatlantic
literary, and social sciences fields by demonstrating what they consider to be the need
lines, even though acknowledged as outdated, continue to thrive de facto through their
ignore the full cross-cultural complexity of Canadian literary culture, and perpetuate the
colonial and racist ideology positing that “a supposedly distinct national character was
art history. For while the discipline has increasingly attempted to address cross-cultural
issues more directly, in both the museum and the literature, its current Eurocentric
disciplinary boundary lines are also unable to account for many cross-cultural and
A recent discussion about placing Aboriginal art in the National Gallery of Canada
(NGC), by art historian Anne Whitelaw, illustrates my point. Whitelaw analyzes various
Aboriginal and Canadian art exhibitions alongside the dominant Western art categories
and Canadian art historical narrative framing them. Each exhibition in its own way
attempted to overcome through their displays the cultural hierarchy inherent in Western
art categories. Display choices were often based on lessons learned from the failures of
similar exhibitions before them. Whitelaw takes this historical groundwork and then
applies it to the essay’s primary focus: the NGC’s attempt at displaying Aboriginal art in
its new Canadian and Aboriginal art galleries opened in 2003. She concludes that
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admirable, the display of Canadian and Aboriginal art in these galleries is not a
complete success.”28 She states that, despite the important attempts to do so, the NGC
does not escape framing Aboriginal art in terms that are only resonant within Western
conceptions of artistic value. The best case scenario Whitelaw presents is that the
NGC’s displays are an “entry point” for further rethinking and necessary cross-cultural
dialogue.29 This example characterizes the fate also shared by many other Canadian art
historical projects that are part of a rising revisionist trend in the field. While “admirable”
for their sensitivity to Aboriginal and ecological issues, and their reflexive attempts to
overcome inherent problems with the discipline of art history itself, my claim is that they
are just not enough. It would be helpful to explore this more with some examples of
☈⊕♁
To be clear, I am not suggesting that the discipline of art history as we know it needs to
broadened, by other voices on and with art in Canada; one with less fundamental
attachment to colonial thought, and more openness toward other ways of knowing.
Even when Canadian cultural and ecological diversity is addressed in recent revisionist
works, it is often still only just an “entry point.” My hope is to begin the conversation
CHAPTER ONE 15
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where we are no longer just standing on the doorstep, but rather now completely
through the doorway and fully inside of our (new) home, or story. As many cultural
theorists have pointed out in their own ways, we cannot catch a full glimpse of the
process fuelling the habits and prejudices structuring our thoughts by gazing “toward
that origin from within the midst of the very civilization it engendered.”30 A short
Ruth B. Phillips, one of Canada’s most important art and cultural historians, in
her contribution to the recent volume on The Visual Arts in Canada (2010), discusses
Aboriginal art in between 1880 and 1970. For her, this is the “most oppressive period in
the history of colonization.”31 She begins with an introduction about the challenges in
writing and “righting” Aboriginal art history amidst the dominant Eurocentric paradigm
structuring the discipline of art history itself. While clearly very knowledgeable about
Aboriginal art, and thankful for the newer revisionist models of art history allowing us to
do better justice to it, she nevertheless admits that her “approach continues to reflect
by saying that it accords “with the historical reality of colonial power relations, which
forced Aboriginal peoples to work through imposed concepts of art.”32 Indeed, this
oppressive historical reality happened, and it is, of course, crucial that the discipline of
art history account for this and the ways in which art history itself was complicit and
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empowering and respectful disciplinary way. On one level, however, a de facto and
rhetorical use of an admittedly oppressive methodological structure can still never do full
justice to Aboriginal art, nor our understanding of it, no matter how attentive to the
cross-cultural issues and Canada’s cultural and ecological diversity, but it also strikes
lines lock Phillips’s discussion and Aboriginal art into a linear understanding of history.
Phillips’s objective focus on a (not so) distant past, contained by the dates 1880-1970,
can work to make the “constraints imposed on Aboriginal peoples during this most
can effectively say, “oh okay, that was then, we don’t do that now.” The oppressive
constraints of 1880-1970 (and the Aboriginal art constrained by them), are safely of the
past, despite many Indigenous writers and scholars demonstrating for decades just how
much this is not really the case.34 Through Phillips’s decision to use an admittedly
Eurocentric approach today, her readers are, therefore, still viewing and learning about
Aboriginal art through those same oppressive structures that established the Euro-
structures and dichotomies are being upheld today by virtue of their methodological
To be sure, I am not saying this essay is “wrong,” only that this kind of important
and sophisticated art historical work can be greatly strengthened when complemented
by a more cross-cultural approach that can include other voices and understandings in
the structure of the discussion as well. Suffice it to say for now, this Phillips essay is an
example of how the discipline of Canadian art history can, on one hand, employ many
crucial aspects of postcolonial criticism. And on the other hand, it also continues to veil
fullness by sustaining the oppressive currency of the conventional paradigm, even while
☈⊕♁
Marilyn J. McKay’s recent Picturing the Land (2011), is not overtly concerned with
overcoming the Eurocentric paradigm, but it presents another instance of art historical
disciplinary boundary lines obscuring a full awareness of cultural and ecological reality
in Canada. The book revisits ways that Canadian art historians have tended to
understand the history of Canadian landscape art and its social production in between
1500 and 1950. She draws from postmodern theories of landscape representation to
their nationalistic agenda, Canadian art historians, argues McKay, have conventionally
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problem with this argument, according to McKay, was that it de-emphasized the crucial
land that have long been part of western culture.”36 The book advances chronologically
French and English Canadian representations of land did not spring from a unique
experience with “Canadian” land, but from one of a stock of entrenched Western
(European) concepts of territory. In keeping with Western cultural traditions, where not
all Western artists thought about the land in the same way, McKay refers to Canadian
core of the issue for McKay is the notion of self in art, particularly the problem inherent
conventional Canadian art historians who approach Canadian art nationally generally
objectified “Canadian” soil. The vast majority of Canadian art histories have discussed
landscape art from this perspective. McKay—and the postmodern theorists she bases
her argument on—places a greater emphasis on the social production of art. As art
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historian and cross-cultural art theorist Steven M. Leuthold remarks, such a shift moves
the role of the self from self-expression to something more like self-representation. In
representing yourself you are acknowledging that your subjectivity always operates
within a more public sphere, which is the “who” you are representing to. In doing so, you
are also claiming the authority to represent yourself within that sphere.37 Whereas the
object for self-expression remains in the self, the object for self-representation is always
outside the self, and is, therefore, always also part subject. This socio-political
and McKay after him, can talk about landscape as a “cultural medium,” or as personal
The problem, for our purposes here, is that the shift from a modernist
understanding of self in art to a postmodern one still allows Canadian art history’s
disciplinary boundary lines to endorse a form of pure individuality in art at all. This
remains consistent with an entrenched Eurocentric paradigm that does not do justice to
the full intercultural and cross-cultural reality of life in Canada. As Leuthold reminds us,
art is still on the individual.39 While a focus on the self is one of the hallmarks of
because: (1) the myriad cultures producing art here for millennia, including throughout
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1500-1950, emphasize context, community, and its interdependent relationship with the
land, not individuality; and (2) such an emphasis cannot help but privilege the ego and a
simultaneously acknowledges the body’s central importance to the artist’s process, such
as in reference to the art of, say, Jackson Pollock’s expressionism, or earth art. One
brief example of how this applies to Picturing the Land itself will be helpful.
When discussing the important place of Joseph Légaré in the story of Canadian
art, McKay begins with a denunciation of art historians J. Russell Harper’s and Dennis
painting because of his ability to paint “‘the Canadian landscape directly and frankly’…
[making] ‘no attempt to press’ his work ‘into a European mould.’”41 She dislodges
Légaré from, in her mind, such notions of Romantic self-expression, and proceeds to
discuss his landscape art in a more self-representational way. Légaré’s artworks are
described as conscious re-presentations of his own artistic agency. They are providing
[within] the social, economic, and political environment of French Canada,” and are a
passionate support for the Catholic Church in order “to strengthen the French Canadian
nation.”42 I am not suggesting that Légaré’s art was not a part of this socio-political
context. On the contrary, I think McKay’s approach to this aspect is important and
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informative. Rather, I argue that McKay’s approach only tells a part of the story, denying
him the possibility of an embodied, pre-conceptual experience with the land of his
landscapes. In other words, perhaps McKay’s and Harper’s approaches are not just
oppositional, but complimentary to each other. Perhaps they are both right in some
important ways.
concept of territory in this case). This is further reinforced by the fact that McKay’s
readers as well only get access to Légaré’s art through recourse to the transcendent,
Eurocentric consciousness called the “sedentary” concept of territory. Both Légaré's and
McKay’s readers are denied the possibility of a sensuous, shifting, breathing, embodied
what individual knowing minds think they know about territory. Such an embodied life is
flesh of the world.”43 This also necessarily shapes consciousness, but through the body,
expressive presences that are also attentive, and listening, to the meanings that move
between them”44—is always available (though not always paid attention to), in an
embodied life. As such, Légaré’s encounter with Chaudière Falls, for example, is
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suggests, and a pre-conceptual and reciprocal participation with a waterfall that charges
the air with a calm excitement. In this kind of encounter the falls are not so much
him (and by extension, his socio-political context). I recognize here that there is a kind
sorts unfurling through both Légaré and the waterfall separately and together. This
mind, from the point of view of one of its constituent parts, manifests here and now in an
ongoing emergence of the real. This is the full story that Légaré and the waterfall, in this
example, are always being told by. They each then tell their own integral part of the
Such a waterfall also wants to get to know Légaré (and many others sharing in its
“flesh”), as it spills and splashes playfully with the rocks, then rises in a soft mist to play
with the wind and fill Légaré’s nostrils and lungs with its own body. The mist maybe
even goes unnoticed at first, perhaps for many encounters, but then one day (even if
only for one day), Légaré maybe steps into a deeper level of awareness, a more
sensuous one, as he feels the pores of his skin, his own body, open up to the water’s
coolness and meet it fully. Interestingly then, the fluid limits of his own mind begin to
take on a slightly different shape themselves over time; perhaps remembering that the
shape of the cascading conversation between the rocks, the shifting wind, the feeding
fish, and eroding shoreline going on around him is also, in part, shaping him. And then,
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perhaps, he glimpses that the chatter of his particular human speech and socio-political
boundaries of the larger Western worldview, inherently deny this larger conversation,
this larger story unfolding all around us in a more-than-human world. But as artists here
have attested to in various ways since the beginning, this larger story is central to the
from our stories of art in Canada. While I am not advocating for a full return to Harper’s
or Reid’s equally Eurocentric readings, I stop short of assuming that their nationalistic
agendas automatically discount every word they said about the possibility of a deeper
connection with the earth here, in this place now called Canada. Like Phillips’s essay
above, McKay’s important and sophisticated work can be enriched by a more cross-
cultural approach—another kind of story about art in Canada—that may help us come to
terms with other possibilities in the human-nature relationship through art, without
This research project is about re-envisioning another story of visual art in Canada. It
wonders what a story of art in Canada would look like if Euro-Canadian and Indigenous
art and ways of knowing could meet, speak, and integrate in an empowering story for all
involved. Guided by this wonder, I allow myself to open up to a place where more than
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just the human mind is at play. Something a little more mysterious and animate has
caught my attention: the awareness that everything we think we know about Canadian
Throughout this work so far, I have been referring to Canadian art history (and
this dissertation), as a story. This has not just been a rhetorical device. I argue that the
most efficient way to neutralize the domination of the Eurocentric paradigm pervading
current Canadian art history and criticism is to bring Indigenous ways of knowing into
this conversation in a significant and respectful way. Recognizing art in its crucial role as
a story inherently achieves this. As in Hudson’s realization above, this is not simply an
inauthentic move for non-Aboriginal Canadians into something they are not, in yet
another colonizing way. It is, rather, a deepening into the social-ecological reality of
here, where, I would suggest, one can awaken to the awareness that the mainstream
story being told about ourselves does not fit anyone any more. In this light, the real
inauthenticity occurring is the continual denying of the creative, embodied, and living
The integral link between stories and Indigenous knowledge is a central theme in
Indigenous education and scholarship. One of the earliest Aboriginal scholars and
storytellers to point this out for a non-Aboriginal audience was writer, storyteller, and
educator Basil Johnston in writing about his own Anishinabe stories, dances, songs, and
toward life and human conduct, character, and quality in their diverse forms are
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embodied and passed on.”45 Many Aboriginal visual artists have also referred to their
younger generations, such as Aaron Paquette.46 Sakaw Cree artist and storyteller, Dale
Auger, for example, introduces his paintings in Medicine Paint (2009) by remembering
and invoking the very old tradition in what we now call Canada of sharing important
The people of one nation would share with those of another their understanding
of the worlds they lived in, the Land they walked on, the Beings they shared the
Land with...The songs and dances the nations would share were deeper forms of
communication; they were the ‘encyclopedias’ holding the knowledge of how a
people came to ‘walk’ in the many worlds they inhabited both physically and
spiritually. The gatherings enabled all these elements to exist in one place at one
time...This collection of paintings is my way of sharing knowledge with many
nations, multiple generations and diverse communities throughout the world.47
This does not mean that there is necessarily a narrative (temporal) structure, per se,
evident in every visual artwork. As Frank demonstrates, also drawing from medical
historian Anne Harrington, there is a distinction between story and narrative. Stories are
“‘living, local, and specific,’” and refer “‘to immediate, concrete events, people, scientific
findings, and more.’ Narratives are the resources from which people construct the
the Theory of Narrative (1985), my use of the terms “story” and “narrative” entail a
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transposition of her definitions. Bal prefers the phrase “narrative text” to “narrative”
alone, and she refers to “story” as a component of any “narrative text,” which also
includes the components of “narration” and “fabula.” In this vein, she states that the
story “does not consist of material different from that of either the text or the fabula, but
that this material is looked at from a certain, specific angle,” ultimately the angle of
narration.49 Whereas one can regard the narrative text, in Bal’s terminology, “as the
product of the use of a medium, and the fabula primarily as the product of imagination,
the story could be regarded as the result of an ordering.”50 In my usage throughout this
project, however, I refer to “narrative” more as the product of ordering, and “story” more
as the product of a medium, within which elements such as narration, fabula, narrative,
and more are components. When I speak of “the master narrative of art in Canada,” or
that of art in Alberta, for example, I acknowledge that this can be a story—the
mainstream story of art in Canada, say—but retain the word “narrative” here to highlight
the fact that the ordering of its narrative elements is almost always the same, as well as
is the angle upon which its narrative material is looked at, that being predominantly a
commonly used within Indigenous studies and discussions about arts and culture.
Therefore, I have used the word “story” to refer to the “product of a medium”—the
category of narrative elements requiring the broader signifier than that signified by the
Returning to the discussion about the different mediums through which stories
can be told, then, Bal also advocates for the consideration of visual art as stories. In her
words, “there is no reason to limit narratological analysis to [literary] texts only.”51 Bal
reminds us that art historical interpretation has often relied heavily on the stories
(especially written ones), that art is supposedly illustrating (or, I add, in order to
literary narrative.52 I agree, and touch on this issue at various points below as well. But I
stories in and of themselves can also “do justice to an aspect of images and their effect
that neither iconography nor other art historical practices can quite articulate.”53 Her
work further demonstrates that art criticism can occur “without endorsing the
hierarchical subordination of visuality to language that has pestered the study of art.”54
To elaborate on this a bit further, in her recent Canadian Paintings, Prints and
Drawings, art educator Anne Newlands includes a reproduction of and write-up about
important Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak’s The Enchanted Owl stone cut on paper from
1960. After a short and poetic description of the artwork, Newlands quotes Ashevak
saying that she “may start off at one end of a form not even knowing what the entirety of
the form is going to be; just drawing as I am thinking, thinking as I am drawing....I try to
make things which satisfy my eye, which satisfy my sense of form and colour.”
Newlands replies with the suggestion that this means Ashevak’s intent “to make
something beautiful, that is all,” precludes her art from being able to “tell a story.”55
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According to my understanding of “story,” this could not be further from the truth.
Ashevak’s methods and artworks are fundamentally “living, local, and specific,” the very
fertile ground from which story emerges, breathes, and instigates, whether through its
holistic beauty, its form, its colour, or something else. Whereas some conventional
narrative and structure. But doing so obscures Ashevak’s story, limits it, and stifles it so
his particular relationship with it in the world. As her comment suggests, Newlands
herself cannot hear a story. Ashevak’s work, then, gets largely finalized, for instance, by
Pictures are stories because they enliven, assemble, entertain, even deceive and
divide people, but primarily animate then instigate other stories, including art historical
ones. To borrow some of Frank’s words, pictures are stories because they are “material
semiotic companions.” Stories are performative, work with objects, and take on the form
of objects, “which are known as materialized stories.” Visual art, in this way, is a
materialized story. Like any story, it is made up of signs. It is also material not only
because it does things in the world, “including inciting love affairs and wars,” but also in
its capacity as a material form, including paintings, sculptures, bracelets, talking sticks,
visual art. Countless paintings throughout the centuries, for example, have told and
retold the story of, say, the murder of Abel by Cain. Each story embodies its own twist
and colour on the story as it has shape-shifted and taken on a life of its own through
various artists’ lives, bodies, and ages. The vicious circularity within Titian’s Cain and
Abel (1542-44), for example, emphasized by its unique perspective as a ceiling painting,
underscores the importance of the biblical commandments in every age since the
original fratricide. William Blake’s The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve (c.
in a rare, non-biblical vision that includes Adam and Eve’s discovery of the body, and
Cain’s reaction. This works to emphasize Cain’s complexity as a human being, opening
the same old story up to far more than the biblical commandments, and the behaviour of
a jealous, cold-blooded killer. In another articulation of the same story, Jewish art
photographer Adi Nes’s staged performance photograph, Cain and Abel (2003),
contributes even more layers to the story. His more homoerotic depiction of male
violence further confounds and animates the biblical/Torah story by making it unclear
which fighter is Cain, and which Abel, and who is actually the stronger of the two.
Visual art has also long-been humans’ companion. Humans and visual art shape
each other, take care of each other, and enable each other to be. In this vein, the kind of
art history, or criticism, I advocate for is one less concerned with—or that unlearns the
primary need for—finalizing explanations and origins, and instead recognizes that art/
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stories are not mere products of human thinking or societies, but also act and animate.
It is important, in other words, that art has been utilized in propagandist ways
throughout history by, say, the church or politicians. But it is more telling for our
purposes here to recognize not that it has been used to act and animate, but that it has
the capacity to do this in the first place. As such, this dissertation pays attention to how
stories animate even the lives and work of art historians, who are already participants in
the story, never somehow outside of it with special objective access to the entirety of its
process. This research project is, in short, a story about how some Canadian art stories
can do what they can do.56 In other words, the re-envisioned story of art in Canada will
be a story that allows, even empowers, art in Canada—all of it—to do what it can do.
This will become clearer as the story unfolds, but for now it is worth emphasizing
that, in each of the descriptions about the interconnected stories of this project, the
categories. The former are the elements now required to balance out the Eurocentricity
of the mainstream story, and make it more cross-cultural and of here. It should also be
mentioned briefly that relating visual art to stories is not to say that the people, events,
and occurrences that Canadian art history speaks of never existed, are not “real,” or
never happened. These, rather, are the instances, among many others, that now
animate our lives by having been rendered narratable. Because of this inherent quality
to animate, stories are incredibly powerful. They amplify aspects of the world around us,
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making them very “real” (if we are ready and paying attention), and so are to be taken
seriously for the ways they can make the world both “real-ly” good, and “real-ly” bad.
The full import of how these stories—artworks—do what they can do in Canadian
contexts can be significantly obscured and debilitated when the many stories are easily
overshadowed from the top down by a circumscribed ONE TRUTH. The dominant
Eurocentric master narrative of Canadian art can too-often imply this, simultaneously
My site of departure for this research is the field of Canadian art history. To get a
clearer picture of where we might be heading on this journey, Chapter Two will take
stock of where we are through a literature review that specifically attends to the field’s
awareness for my storied approach to the field, the review will not be organized by a
chronological linear structure, but rather one that more reflects the circular or spiral form
inherent in many of the indigenous stories from this land. Chickasaw scholar and
lawyer, James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, succinctly describes this kind of process
in stories and dialogue as “iterative rather than linear. The stories are told in a circular or
spiral theme, with the thematic repetition or spiral adding a little.”57 The chapter will be
organized into sections that will begin moving in a seemingly chronological fashion, only
to return to an earlier date again in each new section, adding a layer of information each
time. This will also be the overall organizational structure of the dissertation itself. Each
of the five subsequent chapters will open with a short personal story about art doing
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what it can do in my own life story before getting deeper into the chapter itself. Each
chapter will rely on and embody aspects from the chapters before it, but then also add
another layer of information. This dissertation itself, then, will breathe: emerge from and
pulsate along the curvatures of a spiral, always coming back around to a story that, in
turn, animates and instigates. As some of the stories included will be from my own life,
they will also help build and maintain the relationship between myself (storyteller), and
specifically my approach to stories and how I relate this to Canadian art. In order to
bring my storied approach to bear on our current understanding of visual art in Canada,
I begin with two key texts: Archibald’s Indigenous Storywork (2008), and Frank’s Letting
Stories Breathe (2010), which itself draws frequently from Archibald. Archibald brings an
important Indigenous perspective to the “work” of stories in culture and education. They
inform a process she calls storywork. Her work is important here to help guide the
Eurocentric paradigm. Frank’s work builds on Archibald’s (and others’), for our purposes
here, by bringing a more intercultural perspective to stories and their work, for stories, of
course, are part and parcel of every culture. While Frank draws frequently on
drawing from both Indigenous and Western knowledge. I will introduce his more
Drawing from both storywork and dialogical narrative analysis, then, I proceed to
discuss the storied approach to art in Canada through four fundamental characteristics:
(1) the need to take stories/art seriously in everyday lives; (2) the phenomenological
import and materiality of stories; (3) the performativity of stories and their ability to act in
lives, and with/in objects and places; and (4) their capacity to account for the most
will guide the process that I then apply to visual art in Canada in the remaining chapters.
Like the unique timing in Métis fiddle music, each characteristic, in their own time and
place, sometimes grabs our attention and quickens the discussion, sometimes it
remains in the background and slows things down. They each move in and out of the
discussion at different paces, with their own pulse, and with different moods and
accents, yet their allegiance is to the aliveness of the story, not necessarily its order and
structure per se. There are rules; it is just a different set of rules than we are used to
narrative analysis of both artworks and the stories about them that comprise our
mainstream story of art in Canada. Such an analysis draws from Archibald for its
Indigenous component, which helps link stories more directly with here, and then
empowering them. It draws from Frank for its practice of criticism that is more
A central thread running through my storied approach to art all together is the
emphasis I place on the importance of the body within our more-than-human world as
we live with and through art and story. As Frank states, “Stories always work with
something: with storytellers, with antecedent stories, with places, and with material
objects.”58 Reawakening our awareness for the integral connection our knowledge and
impacts the way we encounter and story our collective reality through art, artists,
approach will unfold through each of the above characteristics of the art process with
particular help from Abram’s work, especially his Becoming Animal (2010). Without a
more complete understanding of the contingent relationship between our animal bodies
and the animate earth, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to recognize the
performative power of stories to move and animate us. As such, it is also difficult, if not
place (a consistent core of stories here for millennia), as human beings with indigenous
the inherent part of any human self that is always fundamentally interwoven—physically,
is conscious of this complex, integral interrelationship or not. Without the above aspects
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in tact, it is no wonder that our story of art in Canada could only ever be abstracted,
colonialist, and never really fitting with who we are here at all. This issue is, indeed, a
characteristic of the discipline of Western art history more generally, and not just an
issue with art criticism in Canada alone. I am just concerning myself here with its
manifestation in Canada.
Chapters Four, Five, and Six will then explore and begin to re-story key aspects
of the current story of art in Canada. This will unfold, first, through three main sections
that explore the story of art in Canada as it has been shaped through conventional
approaches to the art of Lucius O’Brien, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (with a
focus on Thomson in particular), and Paul-Émile Borduas. Each of these sections will
unfold like turns of the above-mentioned spiral. Each will be integrally related to the
previous section, yet also adding new layers of insight each time. The rhythm animating
each turn of the spiral is the same. First, there will be an unlearning of certain aspects of
the discipline of art history that, through the conventional stories about these artists,
have shaped the mainstream story of art in Canada in some way. Second, the
relearning, or re-envisioning of these artists’ work in all of its imaginative and dynamic
aliveness through and for human beings with indigenous souls here.
disproportionate amount of energy spent on each section, but, as in Métis fiddle music
again, for good reason. The first section on Lucius O’Brien will comprise the entire
Chapter Four, not because I privilege O’Brien’s place in the story of art in Canada, but
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because it is here that I begin to move along the first spiralling curvature of my storied
approach to art. I will demonstrate the performativity of O’Brien’s art, which emerges out
of the fundamental reciprocity between his animal body and the animate earth, rather
than from a top-down imperialist ideology imported from Europe alone, as is relayed in
the mainstream story of art in Canada. While exploring this initial turn of the spiral, I aim
to reintroduce Canadian art historians/critics to the animate earth, with all of its
The animate earth is necessarily the story always already animating us from the
ground up in everything we think, do, and say (including our art), as whole human
beings, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. As with any story, the earth too
can be cherished, and crack our hearts open; it can be mysterious and full of wonder; or
instigating, and waiting to have life breathed into it within each of our own life stories. As
we shall see, art historians have seldom been able to see and account for this in their
writing not because it is not there, but because of the discipline’s Eurocentric bias
against it. This needs to be unlearned, in order to see the story of O’Brien’s art (as with
others’ too), in its fullness here. Reweaving the art of O’Brien back into this larger,
performative, and emergent story will introduce the fundamental threads of my storied
approach, so that we can begin opening up our awareness to the ways the story may
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continue to unfurl in the work of other artists as well. This embodies the initial step in re-
art of Tom Thomson (on behalf of the Group of Seven), and then Paul-Émile Borduas.
Each of these sections will demonstrate how the larger story that has unfurled through
O’Brien’s art is also performatively unfurling from the ground up in theirs as well. Their
stories, of course, are uniquely theirs, but not because of different levels of abstract
alone. Rather, they are unique articulations of the same story because they emerge
world here. I demonstrate, then, how criticism in the discipline of Canadian art history
has neither fully accounted for the art of Thomson and the Group, or Borduas. It has
also tended to reinforce aspects now needing to be unlearned, in order for their stories
One of this project’s rhythms, as has been alluded to throughout, is played out
through the dynamic between the unlearning and relearning movements within it. In this
vein, the choice to focus on exploring a storied approach relative to the art of O’Brien,
Thomson, and Borduas in particular is significant. I chose these artists not because I
consider them to be the most important in Canadian history, but because they have
perhaps, the three most central figures in Canadian art history as a whole (especially if
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we consider Emily Carr alongside the Group). As such, my points about unlearning
certain aspects of the discipline with regard to their art (and the conventional story
encapsulating it), will be especially poignant, and go a long way towards clearing a
space within which art in Canada more generally can be re-storied with other artists too.
O’Brien was the first president of the RCA, and a central figure in the Canadian artworld
around the time of confederation. His art, as a result, is conventionally associated with,
and storied as, an imperialist and colonialist ideology and art practice that precludes
new nation and [inspiring] pride in the settlers’ as citizens of that nation.”59 As we shall
see, this is only part of the story. The goal of Chapter Four is not to demonstrate how
the latter story is untrue, but rather, to enrich it by allowing new connections to come to
Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have played a pivotal and controversial
role in the story of art in Canada and so any project concerned with re-envisioning that
story—especially one so taken by the felt encounter between sensate bodies and the
animate earth—almost necessarily need account for them. Their art is conventionally
storied along two related and often opposing (though not always), story lines. One, a
traditionalist story, celebrates the Group’s landscape art for its role in nation building
through its offering a counter-tradition to the dominant European landscape styles of the
time. It acknowledges the Group’s art as much more accurately capturing the spirit and
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feeling of here than anything that had come before it. The other story line, a postcolonial
critical one, denounces the Group’s landscape art because its association of nationhood
with the landscape conceals the extent to which their art is still fundamentally
Eurocentric and colonialist, and therefore, not really of here at all. This story frequently
links the Group’s technique of depopulating their landscapes with a romantic and
imperialistic ideology. Animated by such an ideology, Thomson’s and the Group’s art
effectively separates humans from the natural world, and thereby, erases and denies
From a storied approach, as we shall see, both of these story lines are
incomplete because of each their own inherent Eurocentricity. The first story line leads
one to deny or downplay that the Group’s art could indeed contribute to cultural
genocide and a national story that does not fit here. The second leads one to deny or
downplay that the Group’s art could indeed be “born from the land,” and participate at all
in a story that can and does speak to cross-cultural sharing here in some way.60 My
storied approach to the art of Thomson and the Group will demonstrate that, once
again, both these mainstream story lines are only part of the story. While neither are
untrue, both can be enriched by each other. They will also be enriched by more cross-
cultural and storied awareness that can enable us to unlearn some of their limiting
characteristics, then relearn ways to allow the Group’s art to just do what it can do in its
Borduas is integral to the mainstream story of art in Canada for his important
contribution to, and embracing of, modernism in Canadian art as it was emerging
internationally. Although not the first artist in Canada to paint abstractly, his contributions
to abstraction in Canada helped spearhead the style more than ever before. Art
historians David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff began their entire survey of contemporary
Canadian art with Borduas and his circle.61 More recently, art historian Roald Nasgaard,
architectural” art that can fall under the umbrella of “abstraction,” chose to use Borduas
as his “lodestar...for finding [his] way within the sprawling territory.”62 Within these and
representations of the internal landscape, which emphasize the art object itself. He can
do so, according to the mainstream story, because he embraces (unlike the Group of
Seven), his direct affiliation with European art practices and ideologies, namely
Bringing a storied approach to his art, however, will reveal that this, too, is only
part of the story. It will demonstrate that there is also a deeper and larger story enfolding
and animating even Borduas’s art from the ground up. Exploring ways in which
Borduas’s art performatively emerges within the more-than-human world here (as
way to helping us re-envision a new, more cross-cultural story of art in Canada that can
begin to account not only for landscape art, but abstraction and modernism as well.
My primary source material for the above two chapters is twofold. First, the art
secondary one, but here it is necessarily "primary" because it is the evidence of the
story that Euro-Canadians have constructed; it is and embodies the story as we are
taught and have come to know. Second, I will be drawing from my own experiences and
encounters with some key artworks within that story. As the spiral continues to turn
through the sections of these chapters, the flows, nodes, and articulations of a new
story of art in Canada will start to emerge and assemble. It is one where we begin to
see that the larger story being echoed through each of our artists, according to their
particular carnal immersions in the world here (as we saw earlier with Légaré), is
one, for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists alike. It performatively occurs like this
because everyone is in some way participant in the larger story of being a human being
not, here.
European elements in art created here are, of course, now present and integral,
for they are part of our social-ecological reality. I am not suggesting that these are bad
or inferior to Indigenous ways of knowing. But from a storied approach, as we shall see,
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the stories artists have continually shared here have done less to reinforce and sustain
a continued, dominating, and top-down motivation from Europe. They have done much
more, rather, to erode it like the inherent creativity of the raging rivers sinking into the
the Eurocentric boundary lines inherent in their criticism are more the ones who
reinforce the dominance of Europe in Canadian art. This, therefore, has largely
undermined and weakened the cross-cultural power and resurgent possibility of our
stories within lives here, even if only unintentionally. As a result, significant disconnects
have existed, often frustratingly and bewilderingly, between their story of art in Canada
and the way Canadian art has unfurled within the life experience stories of other viewers
In this light, the final key element engaged here to help re-story art in Canada
consists precisely of opening up the conversation to those voices of other art viewers in
the public sphere. Chapter Six attempts to do this by accounting for and empowering
the role of actual encounters with art in the art storying process. My primary source
material for this chapter consists mainly of interview recordings from interviews
conducted with ordinary Canadians about some of their art stories—ways in which art
has lived on in their everyday lives. I will discuss the decolonizing importance of
engaging the audience in this way, and situate these viewer art stories within the
indigenously oriented story of art that will be building from previous chapters. This
chapter will also be integral to this project because it inherently resists the art historical
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temptation and tendency to finalize art and art experience in a conventional way. It also
directly acknowledges that no one person or group of people, no matter how educated,
I call my final chapter not a conclusion, but an epilogue. This is to return to our
awareness, once again, that although an ending of sorts is upon us, and new
knowledge and insight gained, my story is not meant to conclude or finalize. It is hoped
that it will make new connections, instigate them, amplify, and keep the power of our
important art-stories alive in each our own living, breathing worlds here. This epilogue
will summarize some of the project’s key points with broader reference to other artists
and movements, including Aboriginal art, not mentioned in Chapters Four and Five. It
will also demonstrate and gesture toward ways in which the re-envisioned story of art in
Canada emerging here might also unfurl in art beyond that of O’Brien, Thomson and the
Group, and Borduas. It will also more succinctly outline what this re-envisioned story of
art in Canada is, as well as consider the project’s outcomes relative to some
possibilities for future directions and impacts to which they might point.
Canada: For the purposes of this project, “Canada” does not refer solely to the
imaginary political construct of “the nation,” but rather the geophysical land and more-
than-human world that the imaginary nationalistic construct floats above in the minds of
some people here. It is predominantly a term used to indicate that I am speaking about
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the phenomenological world including not just print, media, and human knowing minds,
but also pre-conceptual trees, grasslands, tundra, wind, and shorelines that interact with
Indigenous / Aboriginal: I use the term “Indigenous” to refer to the peoples of the
world whose political situation is fuelled by the lingering and oppressive effects of the
colonial conquest. It is also a term that necessarily encompasses the state of being
native to a place—including traditions, knowledges, objects, and holistic ways of life that
in its own time and way for everyone, is a slow process, and can involve much hardship,
challenge, and darkness along the way. As the more-than-human world is continually
changing, so too is the journey of being indigenous to its places. It is ongoing and more
Although not without its own issues, for the purposes of this project I use the term
“Aboriginal” when referring to issues and matters of Indigenous peoples within a specific
complex and holistic knowledge systems linked to Indigenous worldviews, being native
to a place, and its particular ecosystems. They are sometimes referred to also as
epistemology.” The use of either term in its plural form acknowledges both the shared
commonalities between the way of knowing of one particular Aboriginal group (i.e.:
Micmac, Cree, or Haida) with another, as well as the diversity of the myriad tribal
Western / Eurocentric: The term “Western,” or the “West,” is used to describe the
being that can be traced back to Europe for its origin, but has since spread throughout
diversity and influences, and not monolithic or static. In its structure and ideology the
colonial mentality that has influenced, subjugated, and imposed upon other
subjugated the traditions of other peoples, but the term “Eurocentric” is concerned with
ontological structures, which is the focus of this project. The subjugated traditions,
relationship to the Western worldview either. There are important similarities and
parallels, but these are sometimes forgotten or devalued within the Western worldview
Art / Aesthetics: The term “art” is a difficult term to utilize in a project emphasizing
because of its association with distinctly Western categories and understandings. These
use of the word “art” for discussing both Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian art, but
spirituality, and the animate physicality of the sensuous world. Thinking of “art” as story
points out, “the problem of finding art in indigenous aesthetics arises not from the
Western definitions of art. If one impoverishes the idea of art, of course it will be difficult
to find art outside of one’s own culture.”64 What is important to realize here is that
broadening our understanding of “art” to include understandings also more in line with
Indigenous cultures, however, is not simply a tokenist act to account for Indigenous
values and functions of art originally present in all Western cultures too. For example,
ideas and practices concerning spirit and soul, ritual, ceremony, morality, and an
animate nature were all important characteristics of most Western aesthetic theories for
centuries, at least up to the mid-to-late nineteenth century. They only recently became
doubt politically charged in the context of neocolonialism, I also follow Leuthold here in
using the term “aesthetics” in discussion of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal art, for similar
set of social practices in the same way that political, economic, or judicial systems are
because it refers to real personal and social behaviours that occur in every culture.”66 In
this light, my use of the term broadens the conventional Western understanding of
“aesthetics,” in order to account for its integral relationship with embodied experience in
the world, and not only with a narrower focus centred on “art” objects and institutions.
that may all occur in a specific place.67 Indigenous aesthetic expression, more
specifically, refers to aesthetic practices that manifest through being native to a place.68
Art history / Art criticism: I understand art history to be the practice of using
various methods to study art objects (i.e.: visual art and architecture, including crafts,
context, form, and social significance of them. I understand the discipline as we know
follow art historian E.H. Gombrich in observing that there are three distinct, though often
one branch emphasizes historical and biographical method. This branch has roots in the
work of Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) and Vasari (1511-1574), for example, and largely
makes up the discipline’s backbone, now associated with the academic art historian.
Second, there is a more critical and subjective branch that is more concerned with
discussing art objects using scientific analysis and descriptive detail to establish artistic
value, or explore or promote styles or movements in art. This branch has precedents
that can be traced back to ancient Greece, but its roots are largely associated today
theoretical in nature and concerned with aesthetics, or explorations into the nature of
art, taste, and beauty. This is the realm largely associated with the art philosopher or
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connoisseur, which also has ancient Greek and Medieval precedents, but is especially
Within the discipline of art history as a whole, academic art historians have
generally neglected the realm of the art philosopher in their contributions to art history,
although this practice has become less common when discussing recent artworks
produced within the last 100 years. Burke’s theories on the picturesque may be one
important exception to the convention, for they are frequently referred to by academic
art historians and art critics alike in reference to both old and new landscape paintings.
It is much more common, however, for academic art historians to engage, even if only
art, for example, are frequently juxtaposed or supported with close descriptive analyses
of form, line, colour, composition, design elements (iconography), and direct or indirect
value judgements about art objects, styles, or movements. It is for this reason that I
maintain the use of the term “art historian” in this dissertation when more primarily
referring to, and taking issue with, the art historian as art critic below, and not
For our purposes here, it is my belief that in Canadian art history, in particular, the
contributions of academic art historians necessarily overlap with, engage, and at times
are often driven by, a form of art criticism that necessarily promotes value judgements
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on visual art in Canada. This might occur directly (more common in the late-nineteenth
century to the present day). Even when the story an art historian in Canada tells about a
work or artist seems purely historical and biographical on the surface, and therefore just
pure, objective “art history” as in its European precedents, I suggest that it never really
is here. The reason for this is that the beginning of art history in Canada, unlike in
Europe, as we shall see in the next chapter, has always been about the promotion and
suppression of the Indigenous ones already present here. This is at the core of
Canadian art history even today, whether acknowledged or not, because the discipline
This is not to say, once again, that the discipline of art history needs to be
jettisoned from Canada. On the contrary, I believe that art history in all its branches is
important and fruitful. The passion and love for art shared by art historians is crucial,
greatly respected by me, and worthy of protecting. But the way we understand art
history and practice it here, the stories we choose to promote and encourage through it,
need to be broadened and deepened, and are long overdue for a change. This
proposed change should allow the discipline (and its stories) to breathe, and empower
and display more of an allegiance with all the peoples and places of here, from the
ground up, as opposed to those primarily from Europe from the top down. The new
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with the process of examining Indigenous cultures through the lens of non-Western
derived from, and to counter the inherent biases that embroil, the more conventional
dissertation, I broaden and adjust the above definition slightly, in order to facilitate my
concern for a cross-cultural approach to art (aspiring to account for both Indigenous and
Western influences and histories), rather than for Indigenous cultures specifically.
Broadening the above definition is also another way in which I put myself, as a person
and learning from the cultural entanglements within Canada and its artworld, instead of
understand this to involve approaching art in Canada in a way not beholden to Western
intention that such a process eradicate Western perspectives from any discussion on art
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at some place or time in the future where it is as though European settlers never came
which Eurocentric ideologies and practices that continue to sustain the unethical and
destructive impacts of colonization are tempered, resisted, and eroded. The way I
propose to embark on this process within the field of Canadian art history is by investing
our discussions of artists, artworks, and their effects in Canada with more Indigenous
voices, stories, and ways of knowing, rather than simply relying on de facto European
ones to understand art here. In this vein, I believe that for the decolonization process to
cultures that need to be decolonized, but all of our ways of knowing, practicing, and
relating to each other. In short, it is a process that ultimately needs to involve Euro-
Canadians and all non-Indigenous peoples here if we are to step into a new, more
am not suggesting in these instances, however, that Europe has nothing of value to
necessarily always best, good, and more truthful. It may at times seem like I am saying
exactly these things. I propose that this is only the case because since the place of
privilege within Canadian art history has for so long been given to European ways of
knowing, in order for a balance to be struck it is more these European knowledges now
There is another reason why it may seem like I consistently emphasize the
importance and value of Indigenous ways of knowing over European ones. I do believe
that Indigenous ways of knowing have a special value in the web of knowledge here,
but that does not mean that European ones have none. The privileged value it may
seem I ascribe to Indigenous ways of knowing, rather, may also be an outcome of the
project’s methodological necessities. While there are many art histories in Canada
working from within Eurocentric understandings of art, I have necessarily needed to put
more emphasis in mine on ways these can be balanced out and complimented. It is not
my intention, however, that this project be one aspiring to some sort of final word,
replacing all other Canadian art histories, which generally do stay more within the
conventional, European boundary lines of the discipline. I remain aware throughout that
there are many other stories of art in Canada—many of which have animated parts of
this one—that operationalize more conventional approaches to art. These are not “bad,”
or “wrong.” I only suggest that they now need to be complimented by other, more
Canada. In this vein, I hope this project can one day stand shoulder to shoulder with
others’ voices and truths may now also be heard and honoured. It is a process that
more fully cultivates the gifts of our social-ecological diversity, and empowers our
cultural entanglements than is conventionally done in our art histories. In short, the
decolonizing movements enacted here with respect to the Canadian artworld are not to
eradicate European ideologies or practices from it, but to rebalance and enhance the
pools of knowledge we all have to draw from in it. I believe that only in so doing will we
be able to increase our social-ecological resilience, and further enrich and empower all
CHAPTER TWO:
LITERATURE REVIEW
I have been interested in art my whole life. Both my parents are creative people: my
mom a folk art painter and crafter, my dad an architectural technologist and builder. Like
appreciate European art, holding it up as “the standard” in art. I have loved (and still
love) a wide variety of art at different times in my life, especially the art of Gustave Klimt,
Rembrandt, Paul Cézanne, William Blake, and the Pre-Raphaelites. The first time I was
ever really “grabbed” by a Canadian artwork was about a decade ago when Lawrence
Paul Yuxweluptun’s, Red Man Watching White Man Trying to Fix Hole in Sky (1990),
totally bewitched me with something I’d never seen before. I felt it in the very core of my
body: my heart sped up a bit; there was a pressure in my stomach that suddenly slipped
into my awareness; and that spot in between my heart and my stomach—right at the
base of the rib cage and chest—felt like it was beginning to enlarge as it radiated a
warmth throughout me. Before I even “knew” anything about this painting at all, I was
“Stupid white men trying to fix the hole in the sky like that—they don’t have a
“Wow! what a beautiful hill in the background; all those colours, and
personalities, all totally bringing it to life,” flashed through at some point as well—the
I remember my attention also resting at some point on the thought: “I love how
the red man is so much a part of that hill, and am very sad that the white men don’t
even seem to notice it, they don’t even seem to be aware of where the hell they are, or
Shortly after this initial encounter I could start to feel myself separate from the
painting a bit as well, as my intellect started to call for explanations. “Wait a minute,” I
rationalized, “I have white skin like those guys trying to fix the hole in the sky. And as
much as I try to stand for otherwise, I know lots of people in my life who don’t see the
mountains out where I live at all like the hills in this painting, or how I might see them.
This saddens me too because as a wilderness guide I should be able to inspire this way
of seeing—not exactly the same, of course, but something like it—in those around me,
but do I? Maybe I’m not really as much a part of the earth around me as I like to think.”
And just like so, this painting and its storied landscape have become a part of my life—
moving in and out of my consciousness at different times, places, and events; taking on
a life of its own through mine. The painting is not so much “giving me the answers,” per
se, but more acting in my journey that began way before I saw it; like a marker, not a
maker.
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on the Continental Divide up the river from my house in the heart of the Rocky
Mountains. As I write this, I can smell its sweet-scented subalpine fir after the rain, hear
the thundering echo of the rockfall on the cliff band above me building through the air,
swaying in the breeze, as I bend down to taste the leaves of my favourite-tasting lily. I
have no way of knowing for sure, but I think I have been to this place more than anyone
else in the world—walking in it, watching in it, resting in it, listening in it, gathering in it,
living in it now for over twenty years. My dad and I are the very ones who made a good
portion of the trail now leading in to it. The trail has since been written up in a few Rocky
Mountain guide books, but it is so far off the main highways running through the Rocky
road), that it is still seldom visited. Tourists in the mountains, it seems, don’t generally
like leaving the highways and the crowds of the national parks. I go to these meadows
when new animals have passed through, new humans have passed through, if the
berries are late or early, and when the spruce buds are best for tea. But over these
years something else has been going on. Something that only started to come into my
awareness because of all this time I have been spending and returning there: this place
It all started one day when I climbed down through a boulder field a slightly
different way than I usually go. Just as I came out through the trees above it and peered
down into the boulders to scout out my through-route, one of the large boulders—a
good two metres high—at the base of the talus scree slope across the field, jumped out
at me differently than it had ever done before. I have been passing it from the other
direction now for well over a decade, but it somehow stood out more from all the other
boulders near it on this day. It wasn’t even close to being the largest boulder, nor the
smallest, but the only way I know how to say it is that it was powerful. It had an energy
that I was just drawn to this particular day (probably because I was only now ready to
notice it in my life for whatever reason). I kept on working my way down the mountain,
but for many trips back since, I made a point of glancing over toward it each time I
passed. One day, I turned my head toward it and it was gone! Or more accurately, it was
no longer just a boulder, but it had changed into a huge toad! It was still very much like
a boulder, but it was definitely a stone toad as well, and everyone I have pointed this out
to since also sees it. It is so obvious now, though, that I can’t believe I didn’t see it
before.
Time passed, I got to know this toad and its home a little better, and I would point
it out to people every now and then as we passed by. Mostly, people laugh, like it’s a
funny coincidence in the middle of this boulder field. Many take pictures, though, and
are genuinely amazed for a while by the presence of this stone toad. One day amidst all
this unfolding between myself and the place I noticed that above this boulder, despite
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the cool, lush meadows and subalpine lakes, there were next to no toads. Below it,
however, I noticed the creeks and forests are full of them. Above it, when it rains higher
up in the meadows, the thunder is also louder than it is anywhere else in the area (and I
know this because I also frequently visit many other places nearby as well). The
lightning is also particularly close and strong right here. Some of the most awesome
lightning storms I have ever experienced were right in these very meadows. It literally
brings down the mountains. Some of the visitors I’ve guided here have even decided to
turn back early because they were so scared of the unique lightening in these skies,
and the way in which it can completely rend everything in its presence. Then I noticed
one day that the stone toad had a large crack down its back, just like the lightening
white stripes down the backs of the Boreal Toads in the valley below it. Then I started to
recognize everything around me in a much more holistic way than I’d ever experienced
I was glimpsing, or rather, deepening into, more and more, the larger story
unfolding all around me. It is a story of this place itself: where I can now easily imagine
a young overconfident toad, long ago, wandering away one day to where his parents
told him not to go (up toward the meadows). He got away with it for a while, but
eventually he was struck by lightning and turned to stone. He now stands like a
guardian for the toads, warning them not to go past up into the meadows, which is
where the lightning and thunder come to play in this part of the world. In their playing,
they are not always paying attention to what’s around them. And that’s how the Boreal
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Toad got the lightning stripe down its back! And this is just the beginning. The storied
What impresses me most now is just how much I am aware that none of this is
just “my imagination”—as in, not my individual knowing mind working alone somehow
the land. It has nothing to do with a special kind of “knowing,” for I don’t control where
the toads go here, I don’t control where the lightning strikes hard and often. This story,
rather, unfolded around me as I really got to know this place, and paid attention to it. I
was nothing more than listening and ready to hear—free for a while of all the jumbled
me. And now I am aware that it also stories me. I didn’t learn what I learned (and am
still learning), through a tiny, compartmentalized picture. It’s always huge in its complex
fullness.
The short story I just recounted of how the Boreal Toad got its stripe is in every
way something that I and this place imagined together. It couldn’t have been otherwise.
And now all who come here with me learn how to respect this place for who, in part, it
really is; for a story it tells, which is still dynamic, alive, animating, and unfolding. It also
gestures me towards an even larger story, one where I am now also aware that no
language, culture, or stories ever really die. They may be forgotten, but if we learn to
pay attention again, their building blocks are all right there in front of us, waiting to have
life breathed back into them. In the meantime, these people I guide to this place, get at
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least to remember the place in a more personal and meaningful way, which can be
incorporated in to their everyday life stories. We can walk here, and be here, in this
storied landscape safely, intimately, and responsibly. Maybe it can even animate them in
A few years later, I was leading a cross-cultural sharing and youth leadership
program down in Guyana, South America. I took a group of Aboriginal youth from
Canada down to the jungles and savannah of the Rupununi where we lived, worked,
and shared with Indigenous youth and their families for two months. In one of the
villages, one of the Elders shared an abridged version of his creation story with us
around the fire (the full version takes days to tell). It was a story about First Woman
coming down to earth through a hole in the sky. She was pregnant and had many two-
legged babies. The two-leggeds grew up, learned many things from the many other
beings around them, and went to many new lands. But then First Woman and her
children started to forget where they were, and they missed their original home. First
Woman sent her children out all over the world to try and find it again by looking for that
original hole in the sky. But even after many encounters with other beings who tried to
help them in some way, they were unsuccessful. To this day, the story says, two-
Hmmm, so what if the sky has been speaking to us all along? What if our home
has been calling to us, showing us where we’re at in the world, and we haven’t been
paying attention? Now there are holes opening up in the sky all around everywhere,
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yelling at this generation to pay attention! To open up to where you are really at in this
world. Maybe these holes aren’t about us trying to “fix” them; maybe they’re trying to
help “fix” us, guide us back home within our storied landscape. Maybe we’re just so
focused on, and impressed by, ourselves and all we “think” we’ve learned on our
search, that we’re more interested in just patching over the hole. And maybe we’re
pioneering Cross-Cultural Issues in Art (2011). The structure of this literature review
follows what Leuthold describes as the main frameworks through which art has been
understanding art and aesthetics,” but the discussion has been too-limited to Western
according to Leuthold, have generally taken three forms when discussing art of more
than one culture in a common framework. Neither, according to him, are truly adequate,
and so he proposes a fourth, which is the one explored in his book. Even though
Canadian art historians have not been overtly concerned with considering Canadian art
cross-culturally until recently, it has been almost impossible for them to avoid cultural
issues altogether because of the sheer diversity of cultures that have always been here.
Art historical works, as a result, have employed versions of all three of Leuthold’s
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conventional frameworks, and some even dip into something like his fourth, even if
mainstream story of art today, while emphasizing aspects of Canadian art history from a
cross-cultural perspective. Before getting into the review itself, I will briefly introduce
The first is called the “inclusivity approach.”71 This approach is used by art
historians when they oscillate back and forth between considerations and examples of
artworks from various cultures. At best, this approach, as Whitelaw says, is “admirable,”
but it severely limits the possibility of understanding deeper cultural and aesthetic
“isolated culture approach.” This approach looks in depth at a single culture on its own.
While these studies can be very rich within a particular cultural framework, they can also
This framework is important for its ability to link complex issues of power with the art
however, to issues with modern art alone, and can often exclude many other important
aspects of the art process by emphasizing primarily political contexts and rhetorical
agendas.
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today, needs to be applied carefully and mindfully when speaking about places in the
draws from, for Canada throughout this dissertation. The last approach, privileged by
Leuthold himself, is the “thematic approach.” This approach takes as its site of
departure one (or all) of eleven themes identified by Leuthold as central to considering
art cross-culturally. The eleven themes are: culture and hybridity; primitivism and
otherness; colonialism; nationalism; art and religion; symbolism and interpretation; style
and ethnicity; sense of place; social order; gender; and the self. This approach
proposes a comparative framework that can integrate artwork from various cultures
more efficiently than the other approaches, while allowing each to speak on their own
terms. I will reserve discussion of the problems I see with this approach for my purposes
Canadian art historians in recent decades have generally maintained that prior to the
1970s the story of art in Canada excluded Aboriginal art and cultures. While this is
accurate to some degree, it is not the case that the art historical literature completely
omitted any word on Aboriginal art and cultures altogether. There was never an absolute
think it significant, however, that, on the contrary, Aboriginal art and cultures had to be
continually mentioned, even if only in passing. As such, the majority of books about art
in Canada did include “something” about Aboriginal cultures and art, even if only to
argue that they did not count, or were not up to the standard of non-Aboriginal art. This
there is something much more nuanced and complex going on than just outright
just as much with Aboriginal art’s exclusion, as with its inclusion. The fact that these art
historians consistently felt that Aboriginal art needed to be mentioned, even if only in a
short, dismissive way, in order to continually write it out of (art) history again and again,
demonstrates that Aboriginal cultures were never completely outside the full story in
at length—the topic in their writings, each time trying to find new words and ways to re-
write Aboriginal cultures out of the story. Yet, as its appearance in the next book on art
in Canada would demonstrate, nothing worked indefinitely, for the next writer almost
inevitably had also to take up the subject, again and again. What seems clear to me is
that on some deeper level, Aboriginal art and cultures were always involved, relevant, or
a part of the story (though unequally and incomprehensibly) for most early art historians.
This is why they had to continually argue, and re-argue, otherwise. Thus, in effect, there
are actually two versions of the inclusivity approach in Canada: an early one, based on
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negation; and a later one (post-1970), which is more positive on the surface, but no less
colonialist at its core. I will review the key texts of this early section in a little more depth,
for they help establish the foundation of our current story of art in Canada.
century, although not concerned with a sense of historicity in art, began showing hints of
an artistic life in Canada that was often intercultural and which would influence the more
formal story of art to come. Popular works such as Henry James Warre’s Sketches in
North America and the Oregon Territory (1848), and Paul Kane’s Wanderings of an
Artist Among the Indians of North America (1859), swung between Aboriginal and Euro-
Canadian cultures in the context of their cross-cultural journeys across the land soon to
be called “Canada.” Kane’s one-man exhibition in 1848, exhibiting the art based on his
journey (of 1846-47), was so popular that it marked a new phase in the story of art in
Canada, eventually leading to the formation of the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA) in
1872.73 After confederation in 1867, and the formation of the RCA in 1880, a sense of
historicity in the Canadian artworld slowly took shape through avenues with a
nationalistic urge to unite Canadians. As art historian Laurier Lacroix points out, at this
early stage “many of the first art historians were the artist-members of the Royal
Some of the earliest art historical writings in Canada, as such, are the
MacCarthy; and landscapists, Robert F. Gagen and William A. Sherwood, to the fourth
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comprise the bulk of the section on “Canadian Art, Music and Sculpture,” and are the
first attempt at piecing together a story of art in Canada (though focused mainly on
Ontario), as we know it today. They touch on Aboriginal art; early French Canadian art
by “those whose careers are now closed by death;”75 contemporary English and French
Canadian art; the rise of Ontario art societies and the RCA; regional differences;
landscape art and nationalism; and sculpture. Forster’s essay, “Art and Artists in
Ontario,” opens the entire section with a paragraph on Aboriginal art that, while
dismissive of Aboriginal art, also draws impetus from Forster’s awareness that many
chiefs]...the dawn of Canadian art.”76 These essays, when viewed in the context of the
various Aboriginal cultures and issues by early Canadian historians. All of these essays
together were dismissive and colonialist, but they also mark the beginning of a version
of cultural inclusivity in the story of art in Canada; one where Aboriginal “presence” in
elaborate a bit on why I believe this phenomenon in early Canadian art historical
argument will be clarified by referencing Anishinabe writer and critic Gerald Vizenor’s
projections of their time, and continue to resist the literatures and scriptures of the
civilization that inscribes dominance, surveillance, and other terminal simulations onto
their realities and communities. The forms of resistance themselves, the simulations of
survivance, “are heard and read stories [often involving humour and ‘Trickster
hermeneutics’] that mediate and undermine the literature of dominance [and its
“they arise from the silence of heard stories, or the imagination of oral literature in
translation, not [from] the absence of the real in simulated realities.” The critical
distinction for Vizenor here is that “postindian warriors create a new tribal presence in
stories,” thus undermining “the absence of the real in the ruins of tribal representations”
dominance” and what I suggest is being indicated by early Canadian art historical
writing. Indeed, the latter is a literature of dominance, but I am not suggesting that the
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works of art historical writing themselves point toward Aboriginal presence. Rather, I am
suggesting that the story they collectively tell through their simulations of domination
and absence, also contains what Vizenor might call “the shimmer of tribal presence”
because of the persistent and recurring presence of Aboriginal art.81 Whatever the
other words, there is always the possibility inherent in the presence of the art for
Vizenor states that the postindian sources of natural reason and tribal
melancholy, and tragedy more often embedded within literatures of dominance. To use
nostalgia or dominance. It does refer to Aboriginal art as a phenomenon of the past, and
some Canadians giving Aboriginal art such a valued place in the story of art in Canada
as its “dawn.” But on the other hand, Forster’s statement could also inspire a wonder in
the idea of “graphic picture-writing on birch-bark,” and a doubt, or even comic reaction
in the idea of such art being so integrally linked to Canadian art in the first place. The
presence of Aboriginal art itself in the Canadian artworld, in short, also always provided
coincidence,” and therefore, for a kind of presence and “[a simulation of] survivance
To return to the main purpose of this chapter, the written contributions to art
history by some Canadian artists in the late-nineteenth century, was also developed by
others through exhibitions. The most visionary of these, directly concerned with a
growing sense of artistic life and historicity in Canada, were those of the various
branches of the Woman’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC), founded in 1892 by Mary
—which stayed ever focused on (even when trying to argue for, or feign independence
from) the current academic and international painting of Europe, the WAAC branches
consistently incorporated into their exhibitions local and historical flare. In any of these
basketry, and quillwork; local ceramics, textiles, and furniture; casts of famous Old
Newton MacTavish’s, The Fine Arts in Canada (1925), was the first attempt at a
full survey of art in Canada, organizing and elaborating in one voice on many of the
topics covered in the 1898 encyclopedia essays. MacTavish’s first chapter was entirely
seeming commonplace awareness of the time (despite it being only four years after the
first nationalistic Group of Seven exhibition), that, “In searching for the beginnings of art
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in the vast territory that now encompasses the Dominion of Canada one turns with first
thoughts to the aboriginals.”84 Far from being simply exclusionary, MacTavish’s early
chapter is the most substantive art historical consideration of Aboriginal art to date (and
would be for decades). It stories Aboriginal art as a precursor (read inferior), to the
superior post-1880 modern Canadian art, which progressed from Aboriginal art through
the art of Paul Kane (also deemed inferior because of his reliance on Aboriginal art and
cultures). This storyline is also reflected in the landmark 1927 exhibition, Canadian West
Coast Art, Native and Modern, a project of ethnologist Marius Barbeau. This exhibition
was the first attempt in Canada to bring together Aboriginal art and other Canadian art
on the national level afforded by the NGC. More organized and focused than the
exhibitions scattered around the country in the mixed venues of the WAAC, this
exhibition confirmed MacTavish’s kind of “inclusivity.” The Aboriginal art in the exhibition
even (unintentionally) overshadowed the art of other Canadian painters, including the
Group of Seven, in the reviews.85 This issue was addressed unofficially by Albert
Robson believes, Indians “did not touch, even lightly, the art of landscape painting,” he
manages to avoid talking about Aboriginal art and peoples more completely than any art
historian up to this point in storying Canadian art. But even he cannot exclude Aboriginal
art completely. At the very end of his book he feels he has to justify his silence on the
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topic up to that point and attempts to explain away Aboriginal art’s undeniable richness,
and undeniable similarities, to his idea of real “Canadian” art.86 Robson’s emphasis
themes, not “Aboriginal art”), for the formation of a “Canadian school” that was not
beholden to “European formulae,”87 allows the door to Aboriginal art to remain ever
slightly ajar. A sentence in his foreword helps illustrate this. He paradoxically links
Aboriginal art to real “Canadian” art when calling for modern landscape artists to draw
more from “motives indigenous to our own soil,” for then “Tourists in search of
something ‘Canadian’ to take home would not be driven to the necessity of limiting their
Aboriginal art, but on the other hand, he reveals that a deeper part of him could not
really separate Aboriginal art from the kind of home-grown Canadian art he advocates in
his praise of modern Canadian landscape art. Even though filtered through a colonialist
mindset, Robson unconsciously admits that Aboriginal art—in this case fur-trimmed
moccasins—is deeply connected with the land of “Canada” in the present, in exactly the
and sculpture within the story of art in Canada for the first time. His introduction includes
the first overt cross-cultural consideration of art in Canada by discussing the possibility
of Aboriginal art and life “actually influencing or being directly influenced by Canadian
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art.”89 He attempts to conclude that there is no influence either way, but he does so
uneasily, leaving the doorway to Aboriginal art open even a bit wider. That is, shortly
after his initial conclusion, he admits that we do “have one instance [of cross-cultural
influence],” being the Eastern Algonquian double s-curve motif that Barbeau had
recently connected to cross-cultural contact with early French settlers. Similarly, a little
further on, McInnes writes that “the art of the West Coast Indians is the only one to have
influenced, even remotely, the main stream of Canadian art” (my emphasis).90
McInnes’s story also later refines MacTavish’s more uneasy placement of Aboriginal art
within the story of art in Canada. Though Aboriginal art is still at the beginning of a linear
historical progression ending with its replacement by European art, McInnes firmly
acknowledges, for the first time in Canadian art history, that there is, nevertheless,
some kind of connection: “the gradual development from Indian and French-Canadian
work to the contemporary landscape school, [making it] quite clear the organic unity of
Canadian art.”91
With McInnes’s last thought, the beginning of the story of art in Canada as we
know it today is set, and a shift in how it will continue to unfold cross-culturally is
intimated. No longer is Aboriginal art a part of the story only as a negation, but it is now
unquestionably a part of the story, even if only at a distant beginning in the past, and
branches out into a more “isolated culture” outlook here, with the dominant isolated
culture being a universalized one simply called “Canadian.” The Canadian isolated
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culture story is inclusive (though still unequally), of Aboriginal art, as well as French,
British, and many others’, in a unified linear progression to the present day. Sculptor
Elizabeth Wyn Wood’s 1947 foreword to Canadian Women Artists, evidences such a
shift:
themselves, but the inclusion of Aboriginal cultures and voices in the idea of “Canadian”
The inclusivity approach does not end here, of course, but subsequently morphs
into the more “positive” version that we know today. This version was influenced by the
alternative isolated culture stories (i.e.: Aboriginal art as part of an isolated culture, and
other non-British cultures as well), and developed throughout the twentieth century. The
more positive kind of “inclusivity” was also influenced by the postcolonial critical
approach that later opened the door to Aboriginal art and cultures even wider still. The
earliest example of this newer version of inclusivity came significantly, once again,
characteristic of the story of art in Canada that goes largely neglected and unnoticed.
Dorothy Farr and Natalie Luckyj’s, From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada
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(1975), set out to celebrate key aesthetic contributions by women artists to “Canadian”
art history. They included in their list Potawatomi artist, Daphne Odjig—easily swinging
to her in between write-ups on Dorothy Knowles, Esther Warkov, Hertha Muysson, and
Christiane Pflug. Later examples of this version of cultural inclusivity in the Canadian art
historical literature include: Ian Thom’s Art BC: Masterworks from British Columbia
(2000); Anne Newlands’s Canadian Art: From its Beginnings to 2000 (2000); the NGC’s
Art of this Land, and new “Galleries of Canadian and Aboriginal Art” (2003); and
embodies the shift from the early version of inclusivity to the “Canadian” isolated culture
approach in the literature. Prior to 1960, the role of Aboriginal art in the story of art in
Canada is always at the beginning of the story, which has since supposedly advanced
beyond it. Hubbard’s Anthology continues this trend, but it also approaches art in
Canada from what was at the time the most cross-cultural perspective so far. Hubbard’s
comparison of “the arts of the French, English, and Spanish colonies” in North America.
While Aboriginal art is situated at the beginning of this story again, such a comparative
structurally hints at a new direction in the story of art in Canada: the final two plates on
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the last two pages of the book—following numerous other illustrations of Euro-Canadian
Hubbard does not address these specifically in his text, for in his text Aboriginal art is at
the beginning of the story. But now these illustrations stand out in comparison to his
own text, as well as to all previous Canadian art historical texts. Pictorially, perhaps
subconsciously, Aboriginal art is now also at the “end” here, or right in the middle of the
story, even if only symbolically, or unintentionally. Taking this a little further, Hubbard’s
book may also begin to hint at elements of what I call the storied approach to art. For
example, by beginning and ending his largely Eurocentric story of art in Canada with
Aboriginal art, he unconsciously illustrates what Canadian art historians have always
seemed to be aware of in their bones, but could never explicitly say: that the
conventional story of art in Canada is actually contained within the story of Aboriginal
art, and not the other way around. But now I am getting ahead of myself.
The nationalistic urge colouring the story of art in Canada since the end of the
nineteenth century began to soften in the 1930s when Canadian art historians opened
up to more international modernist influences. They became less concerned with what
“Canadian” art is (object or subject matter), or the level of technical mastery appropriate
to it, and more with artists’ psychological responses to the world. The locus of the story
of art in Canada shifted more completely into the individual consciousness of the artist.
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This increased the importance of the artist’s life, culture, and society for understanding
her art and art history. These are aspects best approached cross-culturally through an
Donald Buchanan’s prolific work, beginning with his monograph James Wilson
Morrice: A Biography (1936), helped usher in this new formalist and sociological trend in
Canadian art history, where the story of art in Canada became more driven by a
collection of artist biographies and responses to the world, local and global. It also
points to a bisection within the “Canadian” isolated culture story: early modern formalist
works with a nationalist reference, and those whose reference was internationalist.
Examples of the former include Fred Housser’s, A Canadian Art Movement: The Story
of the Group of Seven (1926); Barbeau’s, Cornelius Krieghoff: Pioneer Painter of North
America (1934); and William Colgate’s, Canadian Art: Its Origin and Development
(1943). Examples of the latter rising trend include Buchanan’s own “World of Art” (1938);
Canadian Painters: From Paul Kane to the Group of Seven (1945); and The Growth of
Buchanan (1950) would later view these nationalist and internationalist tendencies as
Canadian art. For him, these developments were then (in the 1950s), demonstrating
that Canadian art was becoming fully “Canadian” because only then was it finally
Krieghoff), in the individual consciousnesses of Canadian artists, and also relative to the
squarely within this progression of the isolated culture approach to art. It solidified the
society, and history through three centuries of almost 200 works, by 150 artists, in order
to, as stated in The Globe and Mail, “break down regional loyalties, and to create an
impression of a vital national art, which need not fear comparison with any in the
world.”94 Ken Lefolii, Elizabeth Kilbourn, and Frank Newfeld’s, Great Canadian Painting:
A Century of Art (1966), reflects this story by switching, for the first time in Canadian art
history, to a thematic structure. This enabled them to break through previous Canadian
art historical barriers that had primarily emphasized landscape painting. The crowning
achievement of this approach to art came at no less significant a time than the 1967
Canada: A History (1966). This was the first full survey of “Canadian” art that attempted
story was framed by an isolated culture approach to art. As I see it, this is because
demonstrated, for example, by art and cultural historians Beverly Rasporich and Tamara
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Seiler95—all of its art in the literature is still largely viewed through, and influenced by
dominant Anglo-Canadian understandings of art and art practice alone. While Aboriginal
and other non-European cultures seemed included and not isolated, on one hand, they
were still subsumed within a Eurocentric understanding of art, on the other. In other
words, the “Canadian” story, although complex and multicultural in itself, was still
primarily coloured and framed by the one dominant Anglo culture at home. And it was
neglect of other cultures, was concerned. Inevitably, the resulting conventional story of
art became challenged by those other non-Anglo cultures. Their own kinds of “isolated
culture” stories often sprouted to add, emphasize, and rebalance key facets of their art
and culture that were neglected, maltreated, or misunderstood by the dominant (Anglo)
For example, the pioneering work of Gérard Morisset in Québec, especially after
his return from France, presented a complementary isolated culture to the dominant
“Canadian” one being carved out in recent decades. Morisset’s Rapport de l’inventaire
des oeuvres d’art (1940), pointed out that, “The history books do not contain anything
more than mere mentions of our [Québec’s] artists…[so] we develop here the need for a
new direction: the valorization of our artistic past in the story of the nation.”96 His later,
Québec et son évolution (1952), plumbed the depths of Québec culture and history,
which was unique and rich on its own, with roots in the expressed need to “effectively
resist the enemy, whether English or Iroquois.”97 During these same decades, Aboriginal
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artists and writers also began to voice the rich depths of their traditions. The
revolutionary BC periodical, Native Voice, was begun in 1947 and used the slogan:
“Official Organ of the Native Brotherhood in British Columbia.” It also regularly included
news, updates, stories, and articles—some relating to Aboriginal art and artists, such as
Québec, and elsewhere. Close on its heels, in 1949-50, Mungo Martin and Ellen Neel
were commissioned by the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) to restore totem poles
at the museum. Soon after that, in 1957, the MOA further commissioned Haida artist Bill
Reid, and Kwakwākā’wakw artist Douglas Cranmer to create more totem poles and a
memorial.
These events signalled a momentum that continued to gather through the 1960s,
and further demonstrated the rich depths of Aboriginal cultures through various
Toronto (1962), as well as his Legends of My People: The Great Ojibwa (1965), edited
and history. Also, Bill Reid continued his Haida village restoration project with Cranmer,
finishing two houses and seven poles in 1962. He then helped illustrate Christie Harris’s
Raven’s Cry (1966), further increasing awareness of West Coast traditions and history.
The momentum from these other “isolated culture” projects—also including Bill
Holm’s important Northwest Coast Indian Art (1965), and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s
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Arts of the Raven (1967)—all came together in the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo
67. The pavilion was curated and controlled by Aboriginal people as a separate pavilion
artists—including Morrisseau, Clutesi, Gerald Tailfeathers, Alex Janiver, Carl Ray, Tom
Hill, and Noel Wuttunee. This event helped stimulate a new kind of awareness of
Aboriginal identity in Canada, and the pavilion turned out to be one of the most popular
draws for the entire Expo. This newfound solidarity between Aboriginal artists and
peoples across Canada helped stimulate a more concerted “Aboriginal” isolated culture
story, separate from the dominant “Canadian” one. Shortly after, Aboriginal cultural
depth and richness was reinforced and asserted in Seneca artist, curator, and art
historian Tom Hill’s landmark exhibition, Canadian Indian Art 74 (1974). This exhibition
challenging the “Canadian” isolated culture story that suggested Aboriginal art and
cultures were only something from a distant past, unconnected to a living, changing
present. In doing so, as Lee-Ann Martin has pointed out, this exhibition also became a
model for large group Aboriginal art exhibitions and art historical discourse over the next
twenty years.98
“Canadian” isolated culture tradition, although, from around 1970, it also became
increasingly influenced by the other isolated culture stories that had been developing
alongside it. Some art historians responded by delving even deeper into aspects of the
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“Canadian” story itself. One branch of this included the close examination of the lives
and works of specific artists in regard to their role within a particular aspect or period of
the “Canadian” story. For example, J. Russell Harper’s Paul Kane’s Frontier (1971),
revisited Kane’s place in Canadian art history; and William Withrow’s Contemporary
Canadian Painting (1972), examined the period 1945 to 1970 through the socio-political
Canadian art history more generally—such as Charles C. Hill’s Canadian Painting in the
Thirties (1975)—or specific regions—such as Nancy E. Dillow, Terry Fenton, and Wayne
Morgan’s Saskatchewan: Art and Artists (1971). Other works examined specific media
in the “Canadian” story, such as Ralph Greenhill and Andrew Birrell’s Canadian
Photography (1979). Yet another branch explored specific genres in Canadian art
history with more depth than ever before. For example, Michael Bell’s Painters in a New
Land (1973), revisited the early topographical and folk paintings and drawings of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Harper’s A People’s Art (1974), focused on non-
academic primitive, naïve, and provincial folk art in Canada; and Dennis Reid’s Our
Own Country Canada (1979), examined the academic landscape tradition in Canada
during the decades surrounding confederation and the establishment of the RCA.
Other art historians after 1970, however, also continued to reinforce the isolated
culture stories that developed alongside the dominant “Canadian” one by delving
deeper into aspects of those other cultures’ art. François-Marc Gagnon continued the
(1976), with Nicole Cloutier; and his examination of one of the seminal contemporary
l’oeuvre (1978). Roald Nasgaard’s The Mystic North (1983), uniquely revisited symbolist
work from Sweden, Finland, Norway, USA, and other parts of Northern Europe. Olive P.
Dickason’s Indian Arts in Canada (1971), surveyed Aboriginal art across Canada, and
was followed up by Hilary Stewart’s Indian Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (1973).
These works were also complemented by Daphne Odjig’s written and illustrated
Nanabush book series (1971), further deepening and broadening the “Aboriginal”
The various projects taking an isolated culture approach in Canadian art history
through the 1960s and 1970s stimulated a new awareness for the socio-political and
intercultural complexities of art in Canada. This led some Euro-Canadian art historians
in the 1980s to avoid the complexity altogether. These began justifying once again why
maintaining the strict separation between the “Canadian” and “Aboriginal” isolated
culture stories. Unlike earlier in the century, when such isolationist justification was
based on negations, David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff’s Contemporary Canadian Art
(1983), and Joan Murray’s The Best Contemporary Canadian Art (1987), for example,
rationalize their exclusion on the seemingly more positive grounds that Aboriginal art
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their own “Canadian” ones.99 The place these authors are coming from is one of
intended respect, not superiority, even though, on one level, it also neglects the real
cultural diversity of Canada (the place), and its art, in favour of an exclusive focus on
Other art historians explored, or even embraced, some of the socio-political and
intercultural complexities rising to the surface in Canadian art history at the time. Robert
Contemporary Art in Canada (1983), with essays by Terrence Heath, Diana Nemiroff,
thematically-driven essays. They proposed to “toss the art of four decades into the air
and allow it to settle into fresh configurations…organic in structure, full of overlaps and
intersections.”100 Barry Lord’s The History of Painting in Canada (1974), did not just
keener awareness for the socio-political import inherent in much Canadian art. By briefly
discussing in his conclusion how the contemporary art of Cree artist Allen Sapp is
related to his argument, Lord also hints at a future direction in Canadian art history.
Here, the universalizing tendency of the “Canadian” isolated culture story on the
multicultural reality of Canada starts again to include Aboriginal art, although now with
more socio-political awareness. This is, significantly, the first time Aboriginal art overtly
appears at the “end” of the story of art in Canada within the text itself, as earlier hinted
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Canadian art history develops into the “postcolonial critical” approach, especially after
1990, which is the topic of the final section of this chapter. In the meantime, Aboriginal
art and cultures can now be acknowledged as more active participators in the
Aboriginal art alone is usually emphasized; it is largely considered more “Western” than
“Aboriginal”; and is often regarded separately from “traditional” Aboriginal art altogether.
The clearest indication of this socio-political shift within art historical literature
may be characterized by the changes occurring between the first and second editions of
Reid’s A Concise History of Canadian Painting: 1973 and 1988, respectively. When the
1966 to 1973, they also necessarily operated alongside each other in their most
isolationist forms. As such, the only major survey texts of Canadian art history that do
not include anything about Aboriginal art at all—a true complete silence for the first time
to date (except indirectly through a couple of mere mentions of Zacharie Vincent, for
expressions of the “Canadian” story itself: Harper’s Painting in Canada, and Reid’s
Concise History. In the second edition of his Concise History, however, Reid added a
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chapter on the period 1965 to 1980, wherein Aboriginal art figures in the text of the story
(at its present-day “end”), in the most prominent way to date. Contemporary Aboriginal
art is largely (and Eurocentrically) discussed as yet another manifestation of the diverse
Since 1970, following in Lord’s footsteps, and especially since Reid’s second
edition in 1988, many art historical contributions to the “Canadian” isolated culture story
begin to follow suit and incorporate Aboriginal art at the end of their stories. It is
noteworthy to point out that, again, one of the first texts to do this in a more
comprehensive way was another about women in Canadian art history: Maria Tippett’s
By a Lady (1992). Here, for the first time in more than just a few sentences or
Oonark, to Daphne Odjig, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, and Jane Ash Poitras—are fully a
part of the “Canadian” story, alongside and helping to stimulate the “revolution”
characterized by the art of such artists as Marion Nicoll, Mary Pratt, Gathie Falk, Joyce
Wieland, Wanda Koop, and Susan Feindel. Many subsequent survey-like works within
art near the end of their stories, particularly for its socio-political import (i.e.: Joan
Alberta Art Chronicle, 2005; and Patricia Ainslie and Laviolette’s Alberta Art and Artists,
2007).
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Like the inclusivity framework discussed earlier, the isolated culture frameworks
did not end here and they still form the bulk of present-day Canadian art history.
popular within each isolated culture story. For example, “Canadian” masterpieces are
discussed by David Burnett (1990), and Joan Murray (1994). Artist monographs
continue to proliferate, such as those on Lucius O’Brien (Reid, 1990); Norval Morrisseau
(Elizabeth McLuhan and Tom Hill, 1984); Alex Colville (Mark Cheetham, 1994); Bill Reid
(Doris Shadbolt, 1998); Brian Jungen (Daina Augaitis, 2005); and Dale Auger (Mary-
Beth Laviolette, 2009). In-depth examinations of specific genres and themes within each
isolated culture story are also prevalent. To name only a few: Canadian Impressionism
is explored by Joan Murray (1973), and Carol Lowrey (1995); “Canadian” art,
“Canadian” mystical painting by Ann Davis (1992); landscape painting by Michael Tooby
(1991), Petra Halkes (2006), and Marilyn McKay (2011); Indian rock art by Grace
Aboriginal art and spirituality by John Friesen and Virginia Lyons Friesen (2006).
Investigations taking a specific region of Canada as the focus are also increasingly
popular in an isolated culture framework, such as, using Alberta as an example, works
on art and Waterton National Park (Brent Laycock and Fred Stenson, 2006), or art and
the Bow River Valley (Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles, 2007). Finally, studies
that centre on gender can also contribute to the depth and richness of various isolated
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culture stories in Canadian art history. Traditional art and Native women are explored by
Lillian Ackerman (1996); women and art on the prairies by Virginia Berry (2005); and
A new kind of socio-political awareness entered into Canadian art historical literature
around the time of Lord’s History of Painting. Various branches of art historical stories
using an isolated culture approach were influenced by this new kind of awareness, as
we have seen, especially since artists themselves were equally engaging the
contexts, and really came into its own around 1990. It is still developing, with many of its
catalogues. This section outlines only some of its key threads for the purposes of this
research project.
emerging side by side through the 1960s and 1970s, one of the central themes that
became increasingly important to address was the power relationship between the two.
This involved a postmodern turn in the “Canadian” story that was also attentive to power
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ethnicity, pluralism, imperialism, history, and subjectivity. The first study relating to
In the art historical literature, the related postcolonial critical framework, more
Eurocentric “Canadian” assumptions about Aboriginal art, and the story of art in Canada
in relation to it. The anthropological work of Michael Ames (1981), and Karen Duffek
(1983), helped bring early awareness to the socio-political extent of the cross-cultural
relationship between Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian isolated culture stories through art
institutions, the art market, and tourists. This kind of work has continued with various
important contributions by Ruth B. Phillips and Janet C. Berlo (1998); Phillips (1999);
Berlo (1999); and Phillips and Mark Salber Phillips (2005). Charlotte Townsend-Gault
(1988; 1993; 1998), has also built on this tradition by further blurring or challenging the
The most important series of events for specifically addressing issues of power in
Aboriginal artists’ circles and communities themselves. Beginning in large part with the
successfully invalidated and stopped a government initiative for the first time. Among
other outcomes, this helped Aboriginal peoples and organizations achieve a recognized
lobbying power in the country, as well as more respectful acknowledgement through the
approval of the special “Indian Rights Process” in 1977.101 Aboriginal leaders would now
have direct input on Aboriginal policy creation. In the artworld, reverberations also
by David General and Doreen Jensen, was officially established to “address the
ongoing exclusion of Indian art from the majority of mainstream art institutions.”102 A few
years later, the Glenbow Museum organized their highly controversial exhibition, The
Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples, in conjunction with the 1988
realities—i.e.: residential school impacts, poverty, and racism—in the exhibition, were
across the country. Power relations between the Indigenous and Euro-Canadian stories
of art in Canada were starting to be thrown into socio-political relief. In 1989, for
example, the Canadian of Museum of Civilization staged In the Shadow of the Sun:
Perspectives on Contemporary Native Art. The same year, SCANA collaborated with the
Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) for the exhibition, Beyond History, curated by Tom Hill and
Karen Duffek. Both exhibitions explored the new socio-political import inherent in
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contemporary Aboriginal art. A couple of years later, in 1990, the Canadian Armed
Forces and Québec Provincial Police used physical force against the Mohawk people of
Kanehsatake who were defending their land near Oka, Québec. Once again, many
Aboriginal artists and communities across Canada were further roused into mutual
These activities of the 1980s and early 1990s spurred and were spurred by an
commentators, and art historians. Loretta Todd (1990), for example, injected the
Alfred Young Man published the first text directly addressing the politics of Native art
importance of Aboriginal voices in revising the story of art in Canada. In the very midst
in the Americas, this exhibition, another SCANA collaboration (this time with the
Aboriginal realities related to the legacy of colonialism itself. The catalogue featured
including McMaster and Martin, Gloria Cranmer Webster, Alootook Ipellie, Todd, and
Young Man. A few months later, this was followed by an equally important contribution to
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collaboration for Land, Spirit, Power, the first major international exhibition of
contemporary Aboriginal art at the NGC. This exhibition, inspired by Alex Janvier, was
equally concerned with the colonial legacy and the importance of Aboriginal voices in
addressing it. The work of this exhibition, and Houle’s catalogue essay in particular,
These two important exhibitions increased awareness for the unequal, colonialist
power relations still very much operating between Indigenous and Euro-Canadian
stories of art in Canada. It is significant that shortly after these exhibitions, Métis artist
Edward Poitras was chosen to represent Canada at the 1995 Venice Biennale for the
Visual Arts. He would be the first Aboriginal artist to do so. Throughout the rest of the
key aesthetic themes. Alongside the work of Phillips, Berlo, and Townsend-Gault
mentioned above, one of the central issues addressed through postcolonial critical
frameworks has been the relationship between people and place, and the identities
shaped by that relationship. Grant Arnold, Monika Kin Gagnon, and Jensen (1996)
variously engaged the topic from different standpoints that highlighted the sharing and
contestation over place; the cultural migration through it; and the metamorphosis that
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occurs when in connection with it, respectively. Allen Sapp (1996), and Gerald
McMaster (1998), engaged the topic through stories about the role of the reservation in
the lives of First Nations artists and in the story of art in Canada.
the representation of Aboriginal peoples in it, or their conspicuous erasure from it, such
as Jonathan Bordo (1992), and Scott Watson (1994). Others discussed, more generally,
some of the postcolonial implications of its role in nation building, Canadian identity
formation, and regionalism, including Lynda Jessup (2002); John O’Brian and Peter
White (2007); and George Melnyk (2007). Many Canadian art historians have also
brought a postcolonial critical framework to bear on the work of specific artists and
commentators, and their canonical works that have been seminal to our understanding
of the story of art in Canada so far. Jessup (1996), discusses problems related to
nationalistic contexts. Dot Tuer (2001), brings the art of Anishinabe artist, Rebecca
Belmore, to bear on Northrop Frye’s influential notions on Canadian art, landscape, and
identity. Todd (1995), similarly does this with the art of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.
Marcia Crosby (1991), and Gerta Moray (2001), have both revisited the art of Emily Carr
Alternatively, Aboriginal art and artists have also been explored in more depth—textually
and visually—for their postcolonial import on society. For example, Jessica Bradley and
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Jolene Rickard discussed the important work of Rebecca Belmore (2005) in this way.
David Liss similarly discussed Kent Monkman (2008). And Joan Cardinal-Schubert’s
Many of the above developments also characterize the complex relations between
culture, art, identity, and place in Canadian art, and postcolonial critical frameworks in
embroiling the Canadian artworld in the 1920s, a seminal decade in the construction of
the story of “Canadian” culture. McMaster (2005), has similarly addressed ways in
which contemporary Aboriginal art has helped influence and shape “Canadian” identity
in general. Martin (2005), explores the role of Aboriginal art more specifically in various
communities. Regional issues in the Canadian artworld have also been revisited
Kaye’s Hiding the Audience (2003). This is an important analysis of how Aboriginal art
and Indigenous knowledge and activism have helped influence the shifting institutional
policies and viewing practices concerning art on the prairies. Various ways in which
Aboriginal art can help effect the above kinds of socio-political change in Canada more
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specifically has been a focus for Allan J. Ryan (1992; 1999), and Troy Patenaude
(2012).
Recent Canadian art historical works also address contemporary Aboriginal art
Indigenous voices, such as Crosby (1991), and Joseph Traugott (1992). The power
museums have, similarly, been of rising concern in recent decades. Watson (1993);
Jessup and Shannon Bagg (2002); and Anne Whitelaw (2000; 2006), have all
commentators have also addressed, with postcolonial critical awareness, the power
relations operating in education, the ways in which art concepts and categories are
taught cross-culturally, and the importance of the arts for more-empowering cross-
cultural education models and practices (Larry Maenpaa and Clarice Kloezeman, 2006;
The most recent and most comprehensive book to date on visual arts in Canada
is Anne Whitelaw’s, Brian Foss’s, and Sandra Paikowsky’s The Visual Arts in Canada
historical issues—Aboriginal art, in keeping with the current convention, makes its most
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concerted contribution to the story of art in Canada, finally, at the very end of the book.
The two chapters on Aboriginal art themselves—one by Phillips, the other by Martin—
variously takes both “inclusivity” and “isolated culture” approaches to art, depending on
the chapter.
This eclectic use of methodologies, form, and content is unique and refreshing,
but it also points toward the ongoing search and necessity for other ways to explore art
in Canada. On one hand, a certain amount of cultural depth is achieved by having the
chapters on Aboriginal art separate. These complement the other chapters, which are
all generally more involved with exploring the “(Euro-)Canadian” story. On the other
hand, when Aboriginal art is included in other chapters it is usually “included” more
simply by swinging back and forth between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal examples.
Both an inclusivity and isolated culture approach (with postcolonial critical overtones),
are uniquely utilized in this one book, perhaps, to offset the problematic weaknesses of
each in an overarching attempt to view the full cross-cultural story of art in Canada. But
merely including both (at times all three), approaches does nothing to actually overcome
perspective on art history, rather, may seem ultimately confused or disoriented. It feels
more like a continual attempt to work around the weaknesses of their conventional
approaches to art, sometimes even combat them, but while nevertheless remaining
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futilely complicit in that which sustains them. The ongoing search for better ways to
explore art in Canada is explicitly, even if unintentionally, addressed and kept open by
the book’s final chapter on writing Canadian art history itself, by Laurier Lacroix. The
chapter ends with Lacroix invoking historian Ramsay Cook’s “vibrant plea for the
development of a cultural history of Canada in which art history would play an active
role.” Lacroix acknowledges that Cook’s “project is still very much with us.”103 This
dissertation hopes to contribute to just such a project by offering another story of art in
Canada; an active one that can empower Canadian art and its history more fully in the
everyday lives of all people here. How I will do this is the topic of the next chapter.
to review the Canadian art historical literature and begin outlining the dominant,
conventional story of art in Canada. This is significant because I argue that even though
it seems that Aboriginal art has been excluded from this story, and many art historians
have been operating under the colonialist assumption that it was, it never really was.
Instead, the literature has always taken the form of one of Leuthold’s cross-cultural
frameworks, which are the “inclusivity” approach, the “isolated culture” approach,” and
the “postcolonial critical” approach. Each has included Aboriginal art in the story of art in
Canada in one way or another, even if only negatively. The problem is that, each time,
Moreover, these approaches did not unfold linearly in the literature. Rather, they often
overlap and coexist and borrow from each other, unfolding more like a spiral: circularly
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and deeply, with each turn unfurling a bit more information and new perspectives,
Once the Canadian artworld started to develop a sense of its own historicity in
the mid-nineteenth century, the story largely took on the form of an inclusivity approach
based in negation. Aboriginal art was being excluded in the writing, but because art
historians kept needing to argue the point over and over with each new essay or book, it
was also continually included. The lived experience of being in a diverse social-
ecological context was often at odds with what was being told abstractly in the writing.
Art historians continued to adapt their story. Or rather, the larger earthly story
sensuously provoking them from the ground up continued to shape, animate their story
It became increasingly the norm to include Aboriginal art from a more positive
standpoint in between roughly 1940 and 1960. At this time, an isolated culture approach
in the literature blossomed under the aegis of the “Canadian” culture. This included
“Canadian” isolated culture approach was still largely rooted in an Anglo-Canadian set
the other cultures subsumed within the “Canadian” culture story. Between roughly 1960
these cultures, on one level, were ever completely “isolated” at all. Issues of power and
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politics and ways these cultures related with each other blossomed within literature
taking a “postcolonial critical” approach to the story of art. This literature is still
an exploration of how we might be able to move past this even further. On one hand,
European cultures, and therefore, another important turn along the spiral. On the other
hand, I explore how they may be less the result of an intellectual progression towards
post-colonialism, and more a deepening into, or an awakening to, stories’ embodied and
CHAPTER THREE:
Many years ago, I fell in love. I had just arrived in what would be my new home for the
respected scholars John Barrell and Michael Phillips on “Blake and the Age of
Revolutions.” My first order of business was to try and make my house feel more like
“my place,” a home. For me, this entailed going out and getting some art for the walls. I
reluctantly had to leave two of my really good friends—two very dear art prints: one of a
Paul Cézanne painting; the other of a painting by Coast Salish artist, Susan Point—
back in Canada. But I didn’t want to just de facto import my Canadian comforts and
“home” into England either. I wanted to head out with an open mind, and be “grabbed”
I left my new house and decided to use this excursion to learn a little bit about my
new surroundings as well. I figured I was going to have my best chance of finding some
new art in York, but I didn’t actually live in York. I lived near the main University of York
campus, in Heslington, which was about a twenty-minute walk from the city. My courses
were all going to be located, however, not on campus, but in York, at a place called
King’s Manor. It was originally built to house the abbots of the nearby Abbey in the
fifteenth century, but was now also the home of the university’s Centre for Eighteenth
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Century Studies. I knew I would be doing the walk between Heslington and King’s
Manor a lot, so I used this occasion to familiarize myself with the route.
I crossed the road from my house into the main university campus, and chose to
walk through one of the campus buildings, in order to get around the big lake full of
swans, geese, and fountains in the middle of the grounds. I entered a long corridor, and
spread out along its back wall were a bunch of trade booths—some representing
various student clubs, some advertising upcoming events, and some selling things,
including (unbeknownst to me until then), art prints. The corridor eventually exited into a
large hall with more booths, and as I turned the corner into the hall, there she was: a
woman who would become a part of my life even up to this very day. She was
immensely beautiful to me. First, it was in the way she looked. She was a Pre-
Raphaelite stunner and wore a red velvet dress that warmed the room like a gentle fire.
I couldn’t help but feel that she exuded the best of love and adventure at the same time.
Second, she enchanted me with a sense of mystery, a kind of darkness that drew me
into her world with a deeper and more complete kind of beauty that, for me, was rare. I
didn’t just “see” her, but could “feel” her within my soul somehow. I have since wondered
awkwardly at times if maybe I had known her in some past life or something.
The “love” story I speak of here is the one I fell into—long before even getting
halfway to York—with John William Waterhouse’s painting, The Crystal Ball (1902). It is
a story that continues to unfold like a spiral in my life today—in and out of my
consciousness, but each return of the spiral broadens and deepens an aspect of who I
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am, what my world is, and how I feel it right now. I might not say that this painting
“changed me,” if by that we mean a direct and instantaneous cause and effect
relationship that suddenly made me into something completely different than I was just
a second ago. Rather, it is much more like an interwoven subworld that is, on one hand,
outside of me, but also, on the other hand, an entity now inhabiting my life as a possible
event that I dwell with, and care about, just like any other person or close friend I might
encounter. My heart beats faster when I think about the painting; my shoulders relax;
the ends of my lips curl up; my eyes brighten and widen; my thoughts slow down; and
my chest and spirits lift with a rejuvenating passion and excitement, for I just love being
The kind of broadening and deepening I speak of takes time. Over the years, I
have become aware of how, in some inexplicable, even largely incomprehensible, way,
this woman’s search is my search, her vitality is integrally linked to my own vitality
believe in the core of my being that the world needs some things to remain mysterious,
magical, sacred, wild, enchanting, and dark. There is a profound beauty in this to me, or
in a world with such mystery in it. These are also the true ground of imagination for me,
which is what I’ve learned beauty is for. Altogether, these qualities in my life are all
crucial, for they are all natural aspects of “aliveness.” The unknown woman in
Waterhouse’s painting drew me into her world over those next few days in York (it
continues today), and in so doing, also started to draw me deeper into my own “at-
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stake” dimension of the world around me. This was not immediately “known” by
decoding and solving some internal puzzle of the painting on the spot. Rather, it
unfolded over time as the painting just became a part of me; very much through my
body first, and then radiating out into different levels of my consciousness as my life and
captivated by the long vertical space of red in between the woman’s hands and the
golden serpentine medallions encircling the bottom of her dress; right in between the
long pieces of fabric hanging from her sleeves. There is a powerful liminal moment
inherent here for me. On one hand, there is an undeniable weight and downward pull
towards the medallions below, which remind me of an eternal unity between the sun and
the moon—continually drawn back together in the darkness that fills creation, toward a
mysterious moment that swells with both peace and energy like in an eclipse. On the
other hand, the folds in the dress and the woman’s tapering body compel me upwards,
towards the woman’s highlighted neck and face. I can’t help but go downward first. But
while my body starts to lose itself in the warmth, comfort, and safety I feel in the calming
embrace of the circular medallions and dynamic folds in the lower part of the dress, I am
also blocked and jolted out of this place by the cool, hard, flat, boxed-in geometry of the
floor. This pushes me back upwards. At first I wish it didn’t, but my resistance was not
uncompromising. I started to also feel somehow rescued by the woman’s long sleeve
extensions, which softly guide me up along her arm to her shoulder, and then around
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her slightly curved neck to her face. There is a silent strength and calmness here too,
but not without a trace of uncertainty. I notice that the woman seems lost in a calm,
inquisitive focus, a deeper search for something that is a little unsettling, but I am also
put at ease and assured by her relaxed posture and serenity. What is she searching
for?
I, too, am suddenly drawn to the crystal ball resting gently in her palms and
commanding her attention. The ball intrigues me, but I don’t know what to make of it
quite yet. Maybe the trace of uncertainty can be resolved elsewhere. The unsettling
element of the moment is suddenly intensified as I notice the skull resting on her table.
My breath shortens a bit, my chest tightens, and there is an uneasy tingling developing
in the depths of my belly. Why does she have a skull!? Whose skull is it? How is death
connected to this beautiful woman and her search? Why is she not more unsettled by
having a skull on her table? There can surely be no answers here, and I just don’t want
to think about death anymore. I happily shift my attention away from the skull and onto
the large book beside it. What’s this? The book reminds me of a bible, or a spell book,
maybe? But whatever kind of book it is, it’s blurry, partially barred from vision, and I
can’t completely get at it or into it. There are no answers here either at the moment. I
have no choice but to make my way back up to the crystal ball, with her. I focus more
intently. I feel my awareness meet and intersect with hers. I notice that the crystal ball
holds inside a reflection of the natural world outside the large arched window behind the
woman. Is this the answer she’s looking for? Does it reside in nature? Is this the answer
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that I’m looking for? But wait, the reflection in the crystal ball is upside down? Whoa, my
heart sinks a little, and I can feel my face getting a little pale, as I realize that sometimes
the world around me also seems a little “upside down,” even when it also, in some way,
isn’t. But this woman is obviously from a time way before mine, what could she possibly
No matter how much my rational mind might keep saying this, however, the
reality, if I am completely honest with myself, is that I just can’t get the image of the
woman and her upside down more-than-human world in that crystal ball out of my head,
out of my life. Even more importantly, I feel them in my soul and very core of my being
to be relevant right now too—not simply as a new found insight, but more like a
that I am within, and which has been enfolding me all along. This is a kind of
remembering—and a living, shifting, breathing place—to which death and fixed written
knowledge (as though this is where certainty lies), are sometimes irrelevant.
I have since also discovered many other aspects to this painting that deepen my
relationship with it, like the layers of an onion. For example, I have learned that it was
painted just after poet, folklorist, and anthropologist Andrew Lang published his
influential The Making of Religion (1898). This interesting book, despite obvious
outdatedness now, broke down commonly held beliefs about the relationship between
the occult, and it comprised an extensive chapter on crystal gazing. I also learned that
my strong reaction to the skull in the painting was far from being the only such reaction
over the years. It produced such intense discomfort for the painting’s new owner in the
early 1950s that he was physically compelled to have the skull painted over and
concealed behind the curtains, only to be discovered and restored to its original state in
the mid-1990s. I have also learned that it was painted just after Waterhouse moved to
the more spacious London suburb of St. John’s Wood. Hmmm, a crossing over into the
mysteries of nature again. Is the crystal ball, in some way, “right”—an important guide
for both myself and the woman, connected to place across time through a very real
sense of mystery or magic? Wow, I feel my body warm as it opens up even more to the
possibility inherent in other kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. I suddenly find the
woman’s calmness and silent strength in this situation comforting, even inspiring. She
no longer seems to be simply holding the crystal ball, but cherishing it. I can’t help but
feel her wonder and pain as she brings it and everything in it closer to our living, beating
hearts.
Steven Leuthold argues that neither of the three conventional cross-cultural approaches
of their reliance on, or inherent limitations due to the ideological perspective in Western
art. I agree. He adds a fourth approach, the “thematic” approach, to remedy this. The
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thematic approach is organized around eleven key themes (mentioned in the previous
of art.104 The advantage of the thematic approach is that artworks from various cultures
still being able to account for power relations and broader cross-cultural forces
approach while discussing an inclusion in many books relating to the story of art in
This painting is frequently associated with a shift in Varley’s style, focus, and
subject matter coinciding with his move to Vancouver in 1926. It has been linked, as
such, to his The Cloud, Red Mountain (1927), and Vera (1930), for its shared
exploration of spiritual values and divine communion with the environment, as well as, in
the case of Vera, its shared subject. Paintings from this phase in Varley’s career appear
frameworks emphasizes European ways of knowing and voices. Its gesture towards
spirituality is associated with the European fascination with Eastern philosophy and
religion.106 Its style and composition are also generally associated with a Eurocentric
and romanticized landscape methodology, like that espoused by the Group of Seven.107
emphasized. This sustains the very imperialistic paradigm many commentators hope to
triumph over when discussing art in Canada. Leuthold’s thematic approach aims to
counter this. Rather than beginning with the painting itself, which can privilege, impose,
approach might begin with a comparison organized around the theme of, say, hybridity,
might be Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau’s Man Changing into Thunderbird (1977).
Both paintings were executed at a time of stylistic transition for the artists. For Varley,
this was instigated by his move away from the Group of Seven to Vancouver; for
Morrisseau, by his coming to terms with many professional and personal demons
played out on canvas through an ambivalence towards “the white man” and the
supposed benefits of his culture. Each painting also drew from new senses of spirituality
that captured the imagination of the artist from outside their own spiritual traditions. For
Varley, it was Buddhism and Hinduism, perhaps through Theosophy; for Morrisseau, the
religion of Eckankar. Each painting also make powerful statements about humans’
divine communion with the environment. These occur from within different cultural
discussion around Dhârâna to other voices within the intercultural context it is a part of.
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It also places Western and Indigenous art on an equal ground so that one is not
of Dhârâna, and vice versa. Varley’s interest in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Theosophy
can be compared to Morrisseau’s interest in Eckankar. Do both express the same kind
of hybridity or cultural diffusion? Which form of cultural diffusion does each expression
Buddhist state within the coast mountains north of Vancouver? What kind of power is
Both Varley and Morrisseau are given refreshingly equal and important voices
concerning the role of art in the emergence of Canadian culture and society here, which
has always been intercultural. For the purposes of this project, however, the thematic
approach, although not without its important contributions, is still not entirely adequate.
It still tends to treat art like raw data. Each work is accorded the same thematic value
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from which is drawn answers about a culture, in order to explain the artwork, or vice
versa. It is assumed, for instance, that Varley’s Dhârâna has just as much to say about,
say, art and religion, as Morriseau’s Man Changing. This might be the case, but it also
might not be. Who decides? Furthermore, Varley’s Dhârâna, from this angle, can largely
more. Morriseau’s Man Changing into Thunderbird can largely only ever be a
representation of Anishinabe culture. Of course, this is partly the case, but neither
culture, nor artworks, are so static within our dynamic, living, breathing more-than-
human world. The thematic approach could also imply that all Euro-Canadians might
generally feel the same about spirituality and a communion with nature as, say, Varley,
or that all Anishinabeg might feel the same about them as Morrisseau. Again, this is not
Leuthold himself acknowledges at the end of his chapter on the theme of art and
religion that it has not provided any answers, only demonstrated the importance of
thinking about the intercultural function of art. Instead, he asks: “How can art
His approach has difficulty with this question because his comparative framework
overemphasizes the stability of the artwork and “collective experience” in a shifting and
inter-relational world. Perhaps Varley and Morrisseau, for instance, are authentically
place in the world together at this time. The intercultural issue, or story, then, is not
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somehow in the artwork alone, but also in the fact that there is an artwork. As such, the
relationships involved in the art encounter itself—between the story, the context of the
“collective experience.” The thematic approach can not entirely account for this. Again,
its comparative framework does allow for many interesting and important cross-cultural
possibilities for understanding art, but it also privileges a highly conceptual approach to
encounters with art that almost completely neglects the role of the audience and the
context of the art encounter in the process. This can devalue the ways in which art can
instigate people in their everyday lives from the ground up. I propose yet another
A storied approach to art in Canada involves four main, interwoven elements that
open up the conventional Eurocentric art historical paradigm to other voices. First, it
acknowledges the centrality of story—here as expressed through and around visual art
—in the formation of all human lives. Second, it accounts for important
performative power of art. And fourth, it enacts the salient objectives of postcolonial
criticism. With all of these overlapping components intact, a more complete social-
ecological picture of living here will be re-energized within, and empowered because of,
the story of art in this place. A fundamental premise of this research project is that: it is
the vitality of its interwoven and diverse cultural and ecological life. The sustenance of
this life has been a driving motif of artists in Canada for millennia. Animating and
amplifying this concern in our story of art is one way to answer Cook’s and Lacroix’s
pleas for art history to “play an active role” in the development of our cultural history.
☈⊕♁
deeply what is meant by “story” and its centrality to all human lives—the first element of
a storied approach to art. The two most inspiring books in helping me to better
understand stories and their crucial work and power in peoples’ lives are Archibald’s
Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (2008), and Frank’s
concerned with the nature of stories, and ways in which they were, can be, and are still
today, traditionally used for sharing and learning in Indigenous cultures throughout
Canada. Frank’s book is concerned with the nature of stories more generally, and with
how scholars, in particular, can better attend to the important ways stories act
—“breathe”—in the lives of all individuals and groups. He himself draws frequently from
Archibald, and both Archibald and Frank attest to the methodological validity of stories
in the world.109 Archibald calls her methodological process “storywork;” Frank calls his
data. Nor are they merely an entertaining fiction in human language, separate from
“real” life, and comprising a linear and mechanical progression from, say, exposition,
through rising action to a climax, and then through falling action to a resolution.
For Archibald, stories are “a reciprocal process between teachers and learners”
that are to be responsibly shared “with a compassionate mind and love for others.”110
They are also “to be taken seriously,” for they “have the power to make our hearts,
minds, bodies, and spirits work together,” whether they frighten, de-centre, inspire, or
make smile.111 Stories do this through what Archibald (with the help of many Elders and
holism, interrelatedness, and synergy. And like a traditional basket maker’s design, even
though stories may be attributed to a particular person, they always “reflect her
relationships with family, community, nation, land, and nature.”112 It might seem to some
as if stories are not “real,” but for Archibald (and many others), they are ever-rooted in
the world around us, and therefore, have the power to be very real, and a part of our
own life-experience stories if one is “grabbed,” ready, learns how to listen, and pays
attention. This power is felt because stories take on a life of their own as they lodge
themselves in the body, mind, heart, and spirit of a captivated listener.113 Learning how
to listen does not involve a set of mechanical rules to follow either, suddenly turning one
into a “listener,” when just a few minutes ago they were not. Rather, like stories
themselves, listening is also a holistic and experiential process that develops over time,
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and involves the skill to quiet oneself—silence one’s mind and body—so that a
“concomitant involvement of the auditory and visual senses, the emotions, the mind,
and patience” can be actively drawn upon.114 With the help of Frank’s work, as we shall
see, these characteristics of story are not simply characteristics of Indigenous stories
Great storytellers can accelerate the storywork process by inspiring the above
kind of listening through profound knowledge and skillful sharing of the power of the
story itself. The storywork process, however, is always actively reciprocal, and involves
four equally important elements: storyteller, story, story listener, and holistic context of
the story encounter. Without any one of these elements—the storyteller’s sharing in a
responsible way, or the listener’s respectful attention and active openness (not always a
conscious thing)—the story will be stifled, or perhaps empty of any real value or
meaning as in the derogatory statement: “it’s just a story.” Stories—their content and
meaning—are only separated out of this storywork process at great peril. As Archibald
points out: “People keep the spirit of a story alive by telling it to others and by interacting
through and with the story. People interrelating with each other through story bring a
story to life as they relate story meaning to their lives in holistic ways.” This interaction
importantly creates a synergistic “story power that [has] emotional, healing, and spiritual
aspects.”115
Frank similarly hesitates to pin down “story” with a succinct definition because he
necessary to its meaning, and for it to perform its social function. While Archibald’s book
focuses on story within the context of Indigenous knowledge—in particular Stó:lō and
adding an important dimension to this cross-cultural project. For him, stories “make life
animate human life; that is their work….Stories breathe life not only into
individuals, but also into groups that assemble around telling and believing
certain stories. After stories animate, they instigate.116
Acknowledging this “work” is more important than finding themes or rules about, or in,
literary narratology—such as plot, characters, point of view, etc.—Frank iterates that the
most important aspect to understanding stories is not how these elements are united in
“some underlying structure of narrative,” but in “what enables stories to have their
effects….on watching them act, not on seeking their essence.”117 This is not to say that
narratological elements and how they are combined do nothing to contribute to a story’s
effect. On the contrary, narratological elements are an important part of a story’s power;
they are just not the main arbiters of that power alone. In this vein, stories, contrary to
are inside of it. Drawing from Archibald, Frank reiterates that “The storyteller gives
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breath to the story, but the story is already there, waiting...The storyteller speaks, but
stories” for making life social: trouble, character, point of view, suspense, interpretive
shifting, performativity, truth telling, and imagination. He hastens to add that not all
stories have all of these capacities, and many exhibit other capacities than the ones he
important is that there is a sufficient number of capacities, which only depends on “how
the capacities are used, as well as the tolerances of those who receive the story.”119
These capacities do not lead to a “definition” of story, but rather, for Frank, to a socio-
Archibald and Frank have shaped my understanding of stories, and the above
look into their work and insight introduces my storied approach to visual art in Canada,
as well as infuses all of its other elements discussed further below. The movement of
thought in this project begins with the awareness that visual art acts, breathes, informs,
forms, and animates human life in Canada with a power that can make our hearts,
minds, bodies, and spirits work together. Art can make life good, light, or happy. It can
also make life dangerous, dark, or frightening, and everything in between. This holistic
complexity is part of the power of story. The story of art in Canada is not only as we
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have been led to believe by conventional Eurocentric art histories, but is also the
☈⊕♁
Another interwoven element of the storied approach to art is its important consideration
for phenomenological life—lived experience, “the felt encounter between our sensate
body and the animate earth.”120 In one of the most refreshing books concerning art
history and aesthetics in recent years, art theorist Alan Paskow remarks that “art
historians and aestheticians have given insufficient attention to the most interesting
experiences in the places where we dwell in everyday life—and to take more seriously
“the reality claims that...are made on us in viewing paintings.”122 For “if our heads do not
properly understand our hearts, we risk responding to paintings with either removed
This does not mean that art historical contributions through feats of sophisticated
does it mean that we can ever be completely outside of interpretation altogether when
encountering visual arts.124 On the contrary, engaging with a visual artwork and its
history through thought, and historical and contextual investigation, does deepen the
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always occurring, for it is, of course, a part of being human, and so equally pertinent to
encounters with art. In Frank’s words, “Stories call for interpretation even as they resist
it.”125
however, is that one can never really “see” art at all except through some overarching
speaking about them from an authoritative and privileged (often Eurocentric) position.
However, stories are living, breathing companions in one’s embodied life, and so
“interpretation” here is much more concerned with “seeing all the variations and
possibilities inherent in the story,” and entering into dialogue with it.126 This is what
Archibald also gets at when she questions where one is supposed to “draw the line
between explication to lessen confusion and disrespecting the story and learners by
telling them what to think.” Stó:lō Elder, Tillie Guiterrez, simply replied to her:
You are helping them [children and people who may not have any background
knowledge about Indigenous teachings] seek out meaning and reason that lies
within all things, to sense their own power and to develop the will to do what is
right...The story does not give them all the answers. It shows them the way.127
Phenomenological aspects in art and art history, then, can help loosen our dependence
and knowledge.128
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Considering art encounters in such a way, one cannot help but be aware of the
material semiotic importance of stories in one’s life. When encountering a story, one is
mysterious, story unfolding all around us—with life breathed into it. This might be why
able to draw so many correlations between art, place, and spirituality. In Tewa educator
Gregory Cajete’s words, art reflects “the ritualization of the life process.”129 Ultimately,
on and with your sensate body, whether you are the artist, or the viewer, through the
story of that place.130 In this vein, when I refer to stories “taking on a life of their own,” I
am referring to their ability to stimulate new meanings, directions, thoughts, and actions
in the world and within particular life experience stories. Moreover, these outcomes may
not have been originally intended or known by the storyteller, nor are they necessarily a
direct result of the story’s original telling. Stories “breathe,” animate, and can take on a
life of their own because the more-than-human world around them, and through which
Human languages, too, are part of this “flesh of the world.”131 Armstrong remarks
that “Through my language I understand I am being spoken to, I’m not the one
speaking. The words are coming from many tongues and mouths of Okanagan people
and the land around them.” Artists, then, are listeners to the stories already there
waiting, and their work is “merely retelling the same stories in different patterns.”132
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When told by a skillful storyteller, as Archibald points out, the story becomes the
teacher.133 In other words, place, or Leuthold’s “sense of place,” for example, is not
simply a “theme” through which to talk about art, but is quite literally the animate,
breathing, true ground of all symbolism and experience in the first place. As Métis poet
and politician Louis Riel simply put in some of his final words before being hanged in
1885, “we are not birds, we have to walk on the ground, and that ground is enriched
☈⊕♁
The storied approach also emphasizes the performative power of art. Performativity is
not just represent an exterior world, but also perform it in to being as active shapers of
and inside the world. Stories, as the name for Archibald’s Indigenous methodology
suggests, “work.” In Frank’s words, “Stories do things; they act.”135 This element is
directly interwoven with the phenomenological aspect of the storied approach, for
“Stories always work with something: with storytellers, with antecedent stories, with
places, and with material objects.”136 Furthermore, they do not stop their performativity
when they are no longer being told. A characteristic of stories’ performativity is that it
has, what Frank calls, resonance: after being performed, “stories are held deep in
memory” and in bodies, whether a human body, a leaf, a grizzly bear, a painting, or a
small green stone that has jumped up from the river bed and smoothened itself in the
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spring run-off before grabbing hold of the shore to meet the sun in mid-July.137 The
resonance of a story is one way it takes on “a life of its own,” follows you around, and
unfolds layers of meaning in your life, especially if you are paying attention. This is why
storywork, according to Archibald, “takes time, patience, openness, and the will to keep
talking with one another in order to learn how to engage in story listening...It is hard
work.”138
In her exploration of the performativity of art, Australian artist and art theorist
Barbara Bolt launches a powerful attack on Eurocentric approaches to art and art
history. Her point of departure is the problem that “In the visual arts, art theorists and
that art is representational.”139 Representation itself is not necessarily the issue, for Bolt,
as much as the fact that it has become such an entrenched way of thinking. In Bolt’s
words, “Representationalism is a system of thought that fixes the world as an object and
resource for human subjects. As a mode of thought that prescribes all that is known, it
orders the world and predetermines what can be thought.”140 After a comprehensive and
over half of her book—she skillfully demonstrates that art is not “representation as a
Most importantly, however, she does not stop there. Her close examination of
with the ways phenomena in the world unfold, are revealed, and unconcealed through
experience mediates that mode of revealing to begin with. For Heidegger, the revealing
(we need light to “see”), and metaphorically (therefore, we need light to “know,” to be
Eurocentric, for it forces the rest of the world to be fixed “yet again in the light of the
European sun.”143 Heidegger’s framing of the relationship between the ontological and
the ontic “fails to take into account a different ontology,” for in Australia—with hardly the
same animate interrelationship with rain and cloud as Europe—the sunlight, in many
places and instances, actually does not “reveal” anything: it is a land abundant with
intense, glaring, dazzling, and blinding Australian sunlight; fuzzy desert mirages; and
recurring instances of midday sun when there is “too much” light to see.144 At these
times, the sun is so bright that “Nothing is concealed, yet nothing is revealed,” both at
the same time.145 It might be argued that this is too literal a critique of Heidegger’s point
about light, but that is also the point. Heidegger’s point about light, in my belief, is in
large part only possible figuratively or metaphorically because of its and his literal
entwinement in the European light and world—the true ground of symbolism—in the first
place.
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such, it is now clear that phenomenological fact or truth is not only revealed by one
universal kind of sunlight, but also by a kind of sun-light that “is no longer revealing, but
insinuates itself in the ‘facts of matter.’” The same, of course, has been noticed in many
places throughout the story of art in Canada, but it is usually quickly undermined once
again by the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history. We have only to
remember, for example, the oft-mentioned pinkish glow within the skies of James
Wilson Morrice, or Paul Kane’s snowblindness, especially after sketching in the blinding
it is not true to all lived experience that “light = form = knowledge = subject,” and “dark =
matter = unknown = object.”147 Rather, both light and matter, known and unknown, are
integral to signifying processes. The most obvious manifestation of this, for Bolt, is in
the wealth of different stories, different strategies for “knowing,” inherent in Indigenous
to place, instead of statically representing place from the top down, like a sun, or on a
map. Performativity occurs through matter, not light alone: “in the chiasmus between
country [land], cultural knowledges and materially constituted bodies (both human and
performed and simultaneously performs, just like Frank’s stories. The material practice
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of art involves a dynamic and holistic productivity, a performative act that can inherently
stories work deeper into the life stories of individuals. This is also why a crucial aspect
of the storywork process for Archibald is the responsibility involved in the “giving back”:
the sharing of the story, or through story, with others when one is ready and it is
appropriate to do so.150 This kind of care and respect for stories and listeners is
imperative so that the power of the story is not weakened, or accidentally mis-used in
more harmful ways than good. Some of the myriad ways stories act, and bring about,
for Frank, include, to name only a few: reporting, inculcating, amusing, instructing,
A well-placed story can even, as anthropologist, Keith Basso, records after his time with
This interrelational and holistic aspect of stories creates an animate and animating
“synergy,” to use Archibald’s word, between all elements of the storywork process. This
synergy brings the story “to life” at the more wild, mysterious, and creative level of
community sharing and interaction; a being-in-the-world that Cajete calls: “that place
that Indian people talk about.”152 In such a place, this synergy also empowers the
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conditions through which humans can rediscover a lost part of themselves, and re-
balance the crucial relationship between our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits.153
☈⊕♁
The final key element in the storied approach to art in Canada is that it enacts the
Eurocentric understandings concerning art and its history in Canada are not privileged
here. Rather, Indigenous voices and ways of knowing—as evidenced by the degree to
which they have been interwoven in the above discussions as well—are fundamentally
critical to this approach. As poet, typographer, and cultural historian, Robert Bringhurst,
There are scholars who hold that Canada is the name of a human
construct...Canadian writers and critics, on the other hand, have been saying for
many years, with almost perfect unanimity, that Canadian literature [and I would
add visual art] speaks from the land, that its allegiance is to place. If we believe
any of that, doesn’t it follow that our literature, and our literary history [our art,
and our art history], has to begin with the voices that spoke from this place first
and have spoken from it longest and appear to know its deepest layers best?154
I reply here with a resounding “yes!” Throughout this section we have only begun to
understand the power of a human being’s lived experience through her sensate body,
and as interwoven with the animate earth. Stories do not only come from storytellers,
we may remember, but also from the teller’s language and culture, as well as from the
story itself, and—a lot of it—from what the teller shares with the animate world (human
and non-human).155 A more cross-cultural approach to art in Canada that does not just
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“include,” but is verily shaped by Indigenous voices and ways of knowing deepens,
broadens, and empowers our story of art in the social-ecological reality of here.
In this vein, the storied approach to art in Canada significantly takes Leuthold’s
thematic approach one step further. As we have seen, Leuthold’s answer to the need for
a methodology that allows other, non-Western, voices into discussions about art is a
particular culture’s theories and traditions.”156 Another problem with this, then, is that it
assumes “theories and traditions” are purely human sociological things, which are more
like possessions of people alone, and which can apply the same anywhere. By this way
intellectually privileging one or the other, or not. I disagree. The true ground of art and
story, as per our point above, is the more-than-human world. This is not adequately
phenomena, fixed in a book or in a dance, but we can never perceive them this way:
“we are not pure, disembodied minds...We are in and of the world, materially embedded
in the same rain-drenched field that the rocks and the ravens inhabit, and so can come
to knowledge only laterally.”157 In short, I argue that there are instances where humans
do experientially privilege certain theories and traditions, even if they might argue
compartment of reason.
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To illustrate this point, cultural and literary historian, Robert C. Holub, has
that:
A culture’s theories and traditions are more than entities humans can privilege or not,
from one day to the next. They are always reciprocally participating with the animate
world, which includes and shapes human minds. In short, certain theories and traditions
—indigenous voices and ways of knowing in our case—are inherently and sensuously
privileged because they are the ones that go with this place. I am not saying that
Indigenous ways of knowing are automatically ecologically sound, nor that they are all
that is required here. I only suggest that even where they may not be ecologically
sound, they are still rooted in alliances with the animate earth, and therefore, ever
pointing towards how to be in balance with any given place here, whether starting from
do contribute much to life in a place here; I only emphasize that indigenous knowledges
are vital to its sustenance and aliveness. And notice the use of “indigenous” (small “i”),
in the above statements. As humans sink deeper into a place, wherever they or their
ancestors may have come from, they are also learning to become indigenous to it.
not mean to suggest a new hierarchy is needed, where one tradition is on top of the
other, and with all the entitlements, simply reversing the one now dominating Canadian
art history. I mean it more in the sense of “liberty.” A tradition in balance and harmony
with its more-than-human context is the one through which liberty speaks the loudest,
for, as Youngblood Henderson has pointed out, it is not based on competition, scarcity,
distrust, and glory (war and conquest).160 The most salient point here is that this kind of
liberty is not just humans’ doing alone; it is not simply a matter of intellectually
Indigenous traditions inherently already have this privilege because they are the ones
generally consisting of deeper alliances and interrelationships with the beings, rhythms,
and spirits of the places here. Privilege, in this sense, is not just an outcome of separate
human minds, from the top down, but, in large part, also of certain traditions’ complex
interrelationship with the animate earth in specific places, from the ground up. The
storied approach to art in Canada simply acknowledges and empowers this already-
occurring “privileging” going on all around us. It allows the full depth of theories and
might say, it shifts our story of art from the “artificial context,” back to the “natural
context.”161 All other thoughts and traditions that enter into a place from elsewhere (i.e.:
European thoughts and traditions entering the place we now call Canada), are still valid,
important, and influential; they are contributors to various forms of hybridity;162 are
challenging, and active, but they are so now within the “natural context” of here, not the
Indigenous ways of knowing and traditions for fully understanding the story of art—all
art—in Canada. This decolonizes our understanding of art and art history in Canada as
in the vision of postcolonial criticism, but, unlike much postcolonial criticism, does so
without being beholden to European concepts and traditions. I will return throughout this
although important and often helpful, is also incomplete. In the meantime, suffice it to
say that this decolonization inherent in the storied approach to art returns us full circle to
the beginning of this section. It is largely able to do this because of its emphasis on the
power of story in our lives. It has been well-documented by many Indigenous Elders,
each other, ourselves, and the things we do (including art); animating life; and making it
social in this place we now call Canada.163 In the often-quoted words of Aboriginal writer
and scholar Thomas King’s “native narrative”: “The truth about stories is that that’s all
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among animals, people, elements of nature, and the Spirit World.”165 At the heart of the
storied approach to visual art in Canada, then, lies a significant pulse, or consistent
tradition of this land for millennia, this is, indeed, a pulse that continues to course
beneath the surface of every art encounter today, and which is integral to the continued
life-sustaining circulation of both the blood through our veins, and the water through our
rivers.
to complement the above section with some further qualification and clarification for the
storied approach. First, it should be stated that when I use the phrase “the story of art in
Canada,” my meaning is not the same as has become conventional in the discipline of
art history. The most famous contribution to art history for introducing us to the concept
of thinking about art like a story is E.H. Gombrich’s magisterial The Story of Art (1950).
Now in its sixteenth edition, The Story of Art presents art history as a linear progression
based on artists’ sociological contexts (which could also include viewer’s shifting
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tastes). Each advancement marks the end of an old tradition, and the beginning of a
new. For Gombrich, the story of art is “the story of a continuous weaving and changing
of traditions in which each work refers to the past and points to the future.”166
Indigenous art, “primitive” art, and non-Western art is at the beginning of this story of
progression’s height.
In Canada, Donald Buchanan prefigured Gombrich by twelve years with his “The
Story of Canadian Art” (1938). He similarly placed Aboriginal art in a distant pre-history
(by not mentioning it at all), and began the official Canadian story of art with the work of
Paul Kane and Cornelius Krieghoff, which improved on the earlier Aboriginal art.
Everything to follow was an advancement on what came before. Both Gombrich’s and
intriguing characters (Giotto, Rembrandt van Rijn, William Hogarth, James Wilson
Morrice, and Emily Carr); suspense (the life and death of Caravaggio, Van Gogh, and
Tom Thomson); and unpredictable turns of events (the Impressionist revolt against
critics and the academy, and the revolt of David Milne, Jack Humphrey, and Pegi Nicol
against the sterile tendencies to imitate the superficial patterns of The Group of Seven).
These are good stories. Buchanan’s work, in particular, helped shape the conventional
story of art in Canada to this day (although now predating Kane and Krieghoff).167
When I speak of “the story of art in Canada,” however, I am far less interested in
emphasizing an underlying narrative structure, and, like Frank, much more concerned
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with what enables it to have its effects. As such, the story I begin to share in the next
chapter, does not imply or say: this is the story—it is all here, analyzed, explicit, and
largely complete in at least its most important parts up to the present day. Rather, it is
more an opening up of further variations and possibilities inherent in the stories of visual
of their own, even if outside the Eurocentric art historical superstructure, and sink back
into the natural context comprising the shifting, rich, and diverse social-ecological reality
of here.
story when considering art in Canada is not to suggest that the term “art” need be
replaced and discarded altogether. I briefly discussed this in Chapter One, but to
elaborate a bit further, the storied approach simply acknowledges the concept of “art” for
what it really is: another story, with its own unique “web of evolutionary affiliations,”
important in many peoples’ lives here, and therefore, is still perfectly valid in Canada.
But the crux of the matter is that the storied approach, unlike in conventional
Eurocentric Canadian art histories, also directly acknowledges that these Westernized
stories are only a part of the story of art in Canada, and of the larger story unfolding all
around us. They can never hope to grasp the entire picture alone here. In fact, as I have
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been suggesting, they require great help along the way from Indigenous ways of
knowing—the actual stories rooted in the soil beneath all of our feet.
So, how does all of the above help us in discovering, breathing life into, another story of
art in Canada? I have consciously refrained from directly referring to the storied
Frank’s words, when story is the concern, unfortunately, “Too many methods seem to
prevent thought from moving. Analytic or interpretive thought that is moving is more
likely to allow and recognize movement in the thought being interpreted. Thought moves
in dialogue.”170 In other words, the power and life of a story is respected if it can stay
moving. As we have seen, reciprocity, sharing, synergy, and other principles implying
dialogical movement are also crucial for Archibald’s understanding of story. Frank,
story. He calls this method dialogical narrative analysis. My storied approach to art
borrows from this practice and could be characterized as my own kind of storyworking
process, or dialogical narrative analysis, with both artworks, and some of the art
historical stories they have animated in the lives of various Canadian art historians and
viewers.
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Catherine Riessman, “there is not, nor should there be, any method of narrative
analysis, if method is understood as a prescribed set of steps that the analysis should
follow. A method, in the prescription model, serves as the guarantee of its final
production.” Instead, method for the dialogical narrative analyst “has precedents,
an interactive practice that helps “to form in new ways”—a “heuristic guide rather than
around art, rather than simply talking about it. As performative stories that help make
the earth habitable, artworks, then, are approached here dialogically. This is to help
articulate, amplify, or empower them in the world today, even in ways unlike those we
are conventionally used to. In the context of Canada, this empowerment necessarily
non-Aboriginal peoples. This does not mean an idealized vision of everyone ever and
difference (crucial for dialogue and movement to occur172), and cultural diversity, while
also recognizing the inextricable link between cultures sharing a place, and between
sharing), in a story’s ability to do what it can do in human lives.174 Entering into dialogue
thought. These questions are not necessarily questions about the teller, the teller’s life,
Canadian art history), but those that inform the central issue for story: “what is at stake
for whom.”175 Different questions will be more useful with different stories, but some that
Frank delineates include: what does the story make narratable? Who is holding their
own in the story, or being obstructed in doing so because of the story? What is the effect
of being caught up in the story? What in the story forces fear or animates desire? And
how does the story help individuals or groups remember who they are? These kinds of
questions start opening up movements of thoughts to the mind, body, emotions, and
spirit—all of which, as Archibald and Frank both demonstrate, are required for any kind
have informed the critical practice of my storied approach to the art of O’Brien,
Thomson, and Borduas, as well as to the viewer of art stories, in subsequent chapters.
it is also one fraught with tension throughout. This is natural, for stories are inherently
open, dynamic, shifting, and breathing entities, whereas interpretation tends toward a
caught up in his or her own stories [i.e. the conventional story of art in Canada],
which may overlap with the narrative habitus [the embedding of stories in bodies]
of the storyteller or may require a substantial shift in horizons [the current limits of
one’s awareness or worldview based on the prejudices inherent in what is
already known and believed], in order for the other’s story to be recognizable.177
In this vein, it is less important that the interpretation “fits the story” (for it is never a finite
thing), and more important that one puts oneself in the story. This is what Okanagan
storyteller Harry Robinson implies when saying that “to know a story you must ‘write it
on your heart.’”178 Similarly, Secwepemc storyteller Robert Matthew states that “If you’re
ready, you’ll get it. If not, then it will be just a story.”179 Getting it is not just an outcome of
significant intellectual effort in decoding or explaining, but of being ready. “Being ready,”
as I understand it, is being a fully embodied, whole human being (of heart, mind, body,
and spirit), who is aware of one’s place within various “elements of life, [and a]
connection to land and community.”180 Moreover, this is not just a performance by the
analyst, but a component of analyses—a crucial part of the analysis itself. It is from this
holistic context that one is “grabbed” by a story, and can begin opening up to ways in
which it can now also become “embedded in [one’s] body, in [one’s] emotional being, in
actually research participants, where this is not just a politically correct euphemism, but
their participation is taken seriously. This means that they are not simply data for
investigators, but they do things. As far as the investigator goes, then, the emphasis is
on what he and the participants are “doing together…whether the participants are
at least in their own lives, and the dialogical interviewer is there to learn from the
participant.” Participants also “make [and co-create] their lives [as] meaningful, and
research is one occasion for enacting meaning.”184 This is all summarized by Frank in
three main principles for dialogical interpretive practice: (1) non-finalizability; (2)
speaking with not about (no one ever has “the whole story”); and (3) claiming no
privilege of interpretive authority. Even when an Indigenous Elder tells a story, there is
no claim to interpretive authority. The story is allowed to breathe, and hit, and grab, and
animate, just as it does and in its own time. A truth may be acknowledged or singled out
as occasions permit and call for, but any life a story takes within a person’s life is
honoured.
ways to enter into dialogue with a story—which are primarily a matter, not of
connections. These acts, depending on the story, might include: translating the story
into images, or in order to tell it from another’s point of view; attending to omissions and
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silences one may have expected, or to differences between the storyteller and the
analyst; and, crucially, slowing down (being patient, listening, and waiting), and
appreciating (what Archibald might refer to as “reverence” for), the story and
storyteller.185 The way these acts inform dialogical narrative analysis itself is dependent
on the form one’s analysis takes based on a position of dialogue with the story. Some
interest, or that build a typology of narrative forms; those that document an effect, or
assemble groups; and those concerned with institutional imposition on, or emplotment
The remaining three chapters breathe life into another story of art in Canada,
then, through two interwoven analytical forms already mentioned above. First, there is
mainstream story of art in Canada, as told by some of its key art historians. I enter into
dialogue with, question, and pay attention to some of their stories, which have been
central to the story of art in Canada as we know it. The particular stories I will be most
concerned with here are: (1) that Lucius O’Brien’s art is a direct result of British
imperialism in action in Canada; (2) that Tom Thomson’s and the Group of Seven’s art is
Paul-Émile Borduas’s art, and the turn toward abstraction and modernism in Canada,
and (4) that ordinary viewer art experience stories are not as relevant to the story of art
in Canada as those of the more artistically educated art historian, critic, artist, or curator.
These are central stories that animate, shape, and make our story of art in Canada work
today. They are also stories that have been finalized by art historians/critics who have
generally seemed to speak about the respective art, not with it, and therefore, have
implied a claim to interpretive authority. Although all sharing in a part of the truth, of
course, these stories, however, are not the whole story, as we shall see.
While approaching these stories through the above questions (the starting point
of my dialogical narrative analysis), I am largely concerned with the extent to which the
story of art in Canada as we know it might reinforce European colonization, even in its
with the natural context and rhythms of aliveness here. Artists in Canada, for example,
are holding their own in our mainstream story, but only largely because of top-down
European aesthetic ideologies and practices. Also, the animate earth is continually
obstructed, and therefore, by default, so too is the performativity and life of its ever
unfurling and emergent story within those of all interwoven entities here. Moreover,
indispensable desire for them (even in Aboriginal artists), and therefore, privileging an
individual or group pedigree that is predominantly shaped by, if not directly rooted in,
them and Europe. It might be worth repeating here that the problem is not with Europe,
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per se. These, of course, are important and crucial to the story of Canada as we know
it, which is well-documented in much literature elsewhere. My concern is more with the
fact these have become such an entrenched way of thinking at the expense of the
diversity, fullness, and richness of the context always already encompassing them here
The dissertation at each of the above points of awareness shifts into another
interwoven analytical form that embodies a relearning. With guidance from the new
directions and connections that will arise from the above questions, I am then better
equipped to step outside the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history, or
walk along its edges, in order to glimpse how the stories of, in this project, O’Brien,
Thomson, Borduas, and some ordinary art viewers, might assemble and effect action in
other ways than those within which we have been institutionally and Eurocentrically
entrenched and inculcated. I enter into dialogue with some artworks and art experience
stories in order to attend more carefully to ways they might enhance and empower the
cross-cultural and art historical dialogue we are used to hearing. This will proliferate
more possibilities for our mainstream story of art, and open up key artists’ stories again
O’Brien, Thomson and the Group of Seven, and Borduas have already provided
such a richness for the conventional story of art that it makes them great partners in
them are that O’Brien’s landscapes make narratable and emphasize an earth narrative
by frequently obstructing the social one depicted. His art, therefore, engages viewers in
in Canada. Moreover, the unpopulated landscapes of Thomson and the Group are just
Borduas’s abstractions are not animated by a desire for European Surrealism or Euro-
American Abstract Expressionism, but by the larger story always already unfolding
around him as a whole human being here (especially around his home at Mont-Saint-
Hilaire, Québec). This, then, is what subsequently makes aspects of these European
aesthetic movements relevant to him and his art, not the other way around.
Furthermore, I discuss how the story being told by these artists, each in their own
ways, is less a Eurocentric one—as being largely shaped by and rooted in European
teachers, sketching trips, ideologies, and aesthetic movements, practices, and styles—
and more an indigenously oriented one that is always already emerging and
rhythmically unfurling and influencing from the ground up here, according to their carnal
immersions within it. Such a story helps all individuals and groups remember who they
are: human beings in a more-than-human world. This has not resonated very strongly in
the mainstream story of art in Canada, not because it is not true or present, but because
art historians working within the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history
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have been primarily trained only to encounter art as a uniquely human construct, in a
predominantly human world, where the animate earth is largely relegated to being not
much more than an inert backdrop for human actions, or a product of human ideology
alone. These conventional stories by Canadian art historians’ are true, but they are also
As an important part of the relearning process, then, I will also do more than just
draw from my own thoughts. As an art historian myself, this could still be privileging the
voice of a supposed “expert” in some way, no matter how different an angle outside the
norm my voice may come from. The dialogical narrative analysis of the interviews I
conducted concerning the stories of ordinary viewers of art aim to counter-balance this.
I will speak more about these interviews in Chapter Five, but for now suffice it to say
that including these other voices in the re-storying process is crucial. This way, the story
is opened up to being more than one of or for art historians alone. This project
acknowledges the story’s ability to empower Canadians to do what they do, and to fit—
speak to—their diverse lives here. I believe that this is fundamentally what the real story
stories in this way. It shifts the emphasis on our understanding of art, and the way in
which it lives on in our lives, from primarily a literary-based approach and kind of
learning and understanding, to one that also honours the “oral roots of all
verbalization.”187 In the words of literary and cultural historian, Walter Ong, “Writing
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separates the knower from the known and thus sets up conditions for…personal
disengagement or distancing.”188 This could be part of the reason why art historians like
Hudson have felt like the discipline of art history has taken away the sense of
imagination, and that she needed to learn “to trust in the personal” again. It could also
hear their stories about art at all in the first place. Almost all of them opened with or
mentioned some kind of a qualifier to emphasize that they did not really know much
about art, or that their answers were going to be nothing much compared to what an art
historian’s, or someone else’s who knew about such things would be. This may be an
outcome of the predominantly literary-based way of learning about and interacting with
art in our lives, whether through books in school or through written blurbs on the gallery
A crucial aspect to allowing art in Canada to breathe more, then, is to help keep it
as “close to the human lifeworld” as possible.189 This is best done by attending more
seriously to the way in which art’s connection to culture and society—its story—is in
great part interwoven with our oral contexts, not just our written or literary ones. As Ong
has demonstrated, it is “the spoken word [that] forms human beings into close-knit
internal to all things in the present moment, and uninterruptedly continuous, writing and
print separate, divide, and reduce experience to units that can falsely seem exterior,
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under our control, and fully explainable.191 In Ong’s words, oral utterance has “great
power.” It “comes from inside living organisms, is ‘dynamic.’” Conversely, when words
are treated as labels, “assimilated to things, ‘out there’ on a flat surface…they are not
actions, but are in a radical sense dead.”192 Taking my storied approach to art, and art
experience stories as told to me by various Canadians, helps keep art in Canada alive
by tending more closely to its everyday situational and operational frames of reference.
Doing so also carries significant decolonizing weight, for Aboriginal voices, well-familiar
with an oral or residually oral paradigm of learning and knowing, are not only included,
but empowered.
The storied approach to art taken by this research project, then, aims to validate
the truth within conventional art historical stories, while also demonstrating that they are
only part of the story of art in Canada. It does so by allowing the conventional story to
move within my own interpretive thought so that we can better recognize just how much
it is actually moving with many other entities and stories in the more-than-human world
here to begin with. These have been largely concealed, sometimes indirectly finalized,
from the top down. Of course, my own interpretive thought is, therefore, participant in
the process by also recognizing that I do not know the whole story alone either.
one might ask, given the third principle (claiming no privilege of interpretive authority):
how can we justify interpretation at all? Dialogical narrative analysis answers this
multiple stories and can connect them. By doing so, it can also articulate what
perspectives on stories and lives, as well as “the possibility, this is what else you are
connected to.”193 Lastly, dialogical narrative analysis “can help people, both individually
and collectively, to reassemble stories that are remembered only in fragments, when the
Archibald encapsulates this final point when discussing how her story-research
process with various Elders was a way of reawakening stories and storytelling abilities
that had been “put to sleep in people’s memories.”195 In a similar way, when I view the
conventional Eurocentric story of art in Canada against the backdrop of the incredibly
rich cultural and ecological life and diversity of this place, I cannot help but see that in its
minor ones. These perceived minor ones, moreover, seem to the larger fragment to
occur only circumstantially around it, while it has largely forgotten the larger story within
which they are all always already participant. A re-envisioned story of art in Canada
hopes to help reawaken stories and storytelling abilities that have been lulled to sleep in
this way.
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CHAPTER FOUR:
Transformation
The sun withdrew its last bit of residual and dissolving light behind the mountain. The
oncoming night began to come out of hiding. The few specks of light left dangling on the
leaves of the nearby wolf willow had long gone, as the earth rolled between my body
and the warmth of the sun. Sitting cross-legged and still, I looked down at the yarrow
beside my knee, scanned past it to the horsetail and indian paintbrush just beyond, and
then twisted my head around to the blanket of kinnikinnik starting to fruit behind me.
Just a little while ago we all stood in radiant relation to the fire of the sun; but now all our
attentions seem wholly taken by the life of each other. There is a new kind of intimacy
here that fully includes me, for the shadow of the earth has seeped into all our bodies,
cooled them off, adjusted our breaths to its breathing, and carried us all out of ourselves
The fathomless darkness continues to engulf us, and I notice that its
composing with me “the local neighborhood of the infinite.”196 I cannot help but lie back
upon the cool earth, and allow my gaze to become its gaze. Its shadow starts to fall now
across my awareness too and I feel myself getting very sleepy. But then I remember
why I’m here. I hear the Elder’s voice in my head: “If you can make it, try to stay awake
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for the morning star. It can show you some powerful things. It’s easy to be scared at
those times, but try not to be. You’re being taken care of. And it’s good not to miss any
information.”
I keep my eyes open. I’m not expecting anything, but, just in case, I don’t want to
miss it this time. I’ve already been out here on the shore of this river—alone, without
food, water, or supplies of any kind—for four days now. I’ll be heading back in to camp
tomorrow, and each night up to now I couldn’t help falling asleep and missing the
morning star. My stomach stopped rumbling with hunger sometime two days ago...I
think...I can’t really remember one day from the next anymore, I’m on a completely
alone. I’m also not angry anymore for taking this commitment on, like I was yesterday,
exactly what it does. That’s it, and it seems to me that’s all everyone needs.
Time just whizzed by. It’s really dark now. I can’t believe how bright the moon
actually is. I can feel myself start to shiver as the cold now settles deeper into my skin
and bounces along my bones. For just a minute I startle myself into thinking I need to
panic. I shift my awareness and let go of the tension in my muscles, allowing myself to
just settle back into the cool air, on the cool earth I feel supporting me. I probably dozed
off for a bit, but if so, it wasn’t long. I perk up to the sound of a pack of coyotes off to my
right—probably the same pack that ran through the camp the night before I headed out
here. It sounds like they’re having a party over there! Yipping and yapping. Eventually
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they quiet down and it’s just me again. I have no idea what time it is. It doesn’t matter at
all, but my mind, so trained to care about that, can’t stop wondering anyway. Some
more time goes by and I feel my awareness perk up again. But it’s nothing definitive
grabbing my attention this time, just a nagging, invisible presence on my left. I glance
over and there’s nothing there but a swaying stand of spruce and fir trees. I force myself
to turn back toward the river in front of me, but I can’t help it anymore. There is
control my head from turning back that way again. And suddenly, my body tightens, my
mind expands, and I’m flung into the midst of a bright flash that awakens and fires every
cell in my body. I’m staring in between the two nearest trees, right into the chest of a
grizzly bear. It’s standing on its hind legs, with both arms out on either side of its huge
body. In a split second, my heart quickens, I feel a rush of adrenaline surge through my
veins, and a deafening pounding in my chest. I’m still sitting, so all I can do without
thinking about it is turn away and fling my body back over to the right in reaction. I roll
onto my stomach and when I look back up...it’s gone. All the commotion probably lasted
only a matter of seconds, but a lifetime in my awareness and in my bones. It’s nothing
but darkness again, and just then I hear a despairing voice from somewhere in the
This sends chills up my spine. I turn back over, sit back where I was before, and
reflect on what the hell just happened! I look around me to settle down and take my
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bearings again. The river is still there, slowly bringing me back into this place. I glance
refreshingly up to the mountain ridge behind it, and then suddenly notice, just above
one of its peaks: the morning star radiating back at me with a smile. I am astounded. It
takes my breath away. And now the real utterance can begin...
The story I just told was an episode from a while ago in my own life-experience
story. This was truly a gift that keeps unfolding in my life, and it eventually guided me a
couple years ago to another treasure that has been forever written on my heart: Aaron
Paquette’s mesmerizing painting, Transformation (Fig. 1). The experience above helped
make me aware of the importance in my life of learning how to really love others, and let
others love me, however they can and do. To work more at refraining from passing
judgement so quickly, and thereby sometimes missing out on other truths inherent in the
larger story ever unfurling around us. As this lesson continues to work through me, my
growth and changing and learning with these awarenesses is now also interwoven with,
inspired and animated by, Paquette’s painting. It perfectly embodies what I imagine my
own transformation towards a more loving relationship with all beings in creation to be.
When I’m paying attention, it is, indeed, a sacred, material semiotic companion of mine
website of Edmonton’s Bearclaw Art Gallery, who, at the time, were trying to sell it. In
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FIG. 1. Aaron Paquette, Transformation, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 35.6 x 27.9 cm.
Private collection.
comparison to the price of many paintings these days, it was not that expensive at all.
But, being a student, it was still well out of my price range, otherwise I would have
purchased it on the spot. I lived in Edmonton for six years during my undergraduate
studies, so had friends there, and was regularly travelling up for work related to this
project, as well as for visits with some Métis artist friends of mine—Paquette and
shows, and conferences. On every trip to Edmonton, I always made a point of setting a
few minutes aside to go visit Transformation at the Bearclaw. It sat there on the wall with
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its price tag for months, the better part of a year even. I still couldn’t afford it, and
secretly loved that it wasn’t selling because then I could see it in person whenever I
liked.
I was first drawn to the painting in its entirety. No one element particularly stood
out to me and pulled me in. Its whole feeling, energy, and presence was just intuitively
recognized as already a part of, or in tune, with mine—like a soul-sister who I had never
“met” before, but, yet, somehow remembered from a long time ago. It was like a
forgotten piece of who I really am. When I look closer, my attention is called, compelled,
and pulled, first, by the cluster of flowers on the bottom left. But not passively. The
flowers, each diversely differentiated with their own gifts relative to the others around
them, enliven my embodied awareness. I cannot help but continually move and shift
the wild contingency of each our existences, “the uncertainty and risk of the present
moment.”197 The thick, black form-lines particularizing this animate encounter with the
flowers eventually swerve and push my awareness up and to the right, where our
Our journey together now takes flight in the form of an elegant soaring eagle. The
commingling of myself, the flowers, and the eagle does not dissolve the distance and
shifting nodes and flows as we all move together: the curling, pinnate, and fern-like
yarrow leaves are wholly themselves, and also feel like the feathery swirls of eagle
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down shifting in the wind, as well as the upper wing covert feathers over the eagle’s
wrists. The array of wild flowers are each individuals, and also now the out-stretching,
trailing edge wing and tail feathers. They are also now the capacity of aliveness that the
land also imparts to my own body, as I come to recognize the astonishing malleability of
my own animal senses. Like the eagle’s and the flowers’ in the painting, my own body
and sensory awareness is itself a kind of place. A place through which other entities and
ways.198
In this vein, the golden, egg-shaped, living heart of the eagle, is also my heart,
and the heart of the universe—infusing through its mysterious tendrils, and infused with
everything, holding everything together in some way. Like when the sun greets the day
and the inner flames of all the world’s creatures. I can feel it intimately. As I look at it, I
feel it warm my heart as I continue to learn about what love is, and is for, in the giving
and receiving of it in my own life. Being with this painting opens my body up to the
awareness that I, too, am no less connected with the celestial bodies in the sky as with
the deep roots of all life in the earth—hmmm, like that Elder said years ago, I am being
taken care of. For I also notice that these fundamental elements—earth and sky—
through Paquette’s painting, right before my eyes, and through my own body. Maybe I
do have the ability in me to enact this love in my own life? Maybe I can really love
others from this place, and let them love me—both as I really am, and as they really
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are? I relax more deeply into the painting itself, and just as I think I am understanding it,
hah! I am suddenly struck yet again. My breath is completely taken away: within this
sacred mystery unfolding all around us, the heart of the eagle, the heart of the universe
in the painting—my own living, beating heart in this world around me—is also a morning
star.
gallery to be with the painting again and...it was gone! I looked all around the gallery
wondering if it had just been moved to another wall to try and generate some more
interest for selling it, but it was nowhere to be found. I immediately approached the
“Oh, it sold about a month ago to a guy from northern Alberta,” she said.
A palpable and heavy sadness drooped over me and slumped my body, like I had
lost a good friend. But I was also partly happy that it was now in someone’s life,
unfolding with them however it was meant to be doing there. I quickly contacted
Paquette to ask who the buyer was and see if he had their contact information. He did
know who the buyer was, did have his contact information, and put me in touch with him
so I could ask about the purchase. Ever since embarking on this research journey, I’ve
been interested in and collecting various art stories from people who have been
touched, moved, or inspired by art in their own everyday lives in some way—the other
fragments of our collective art story that art historians largely neglect or undermine. I
couldn’t wait to hear what this other art story behind my beloved Transformation was.
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The buyer was glad to chat with me, and we spoke on the phone for quite a while. His
story was also a good one, full of love and caring. It is now also a part of the painting’s
story as it continues to breathe and unfurl through each of us according to each our own
The buyer was a school teacher working for the Northern Lights School Division
(NLSD) around Lac La Biche, Alberta. He had been hired as part of a committee of
educators to write recommendations for improving the education system within their
write an ever expanding and changing reference book for educators throughout it. The
book will be entitled The FNMI Educator’s Handbook, and the project entailed a
division and their communities. The committee put a lot of thought into the cover image
for the handbook and after scouring through many ideas and many artists’ work, the
buyer was guided towards Paquette, and it was Transformation that finally grabbed him.
The painting seemed to capture and fire his imagination. It was difficult for him to
put the encounter into words, but he repeated in different articulations on more than one
occasion in our chat that it seemed to embody what he thought transformation was,
which was also what he thought education was about. Furthermore, it was significant
that it could do this for him without even knowing what the title of the painting was. It
was also significant that the painting felt to him to have a very “spiritual element to it.”
Also, the painting beat with the heart of transformation for him in a way that he thought
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could help “keep people mindful of the whole process [of improving the Alberta
education system],” and the need “to do things better and more effectively” for our
youth. The buyer expressed the hope to me that the handbook’s cover would leave “a
lasting impression so it keeps [the book’s work and message] conscious in people’s
minds.” “That’s why,” he said “I wanted to have a very powerful piece on the cover.”
Upon the completion of the handbook, it will be brought back to the communities
within the school division to celebrate their new collaborative direction together.
Moreover, far from being just something for the educators themselves, the handbook
on them to handout as well. Many prints of the painting will also be produced and given
to various schools within the division, to Alberta Education, and to each of the NLSD
offices. The original painting was donated to the NLSD and will be hung in their main
office in Lac La Biche. “Everything I’ve been doing is for the kids,” the buyer humbly and
quietly said to me.199 And thus, the story of Transformation has again taken on a life of
Git'ksan artist and art historian Doreen Jensen, “our human capacity for transforming
the world.”200 The painting’s buyer and I had very different stories encompassing the
work. Yet, there was something the same. Not because of something we were doing
with it or to it or about it, but because of what it was doing with and to us. Helping us to
love and be together in the world deeper. And thus, we start to open up to where the
Before breathing life into another story of art in Canada, it will be helpful to recap exactly
what the conventional story is. As all stories do, it has shifted, metamorphosed,
this, however, the core of the story has been maintained. In its simplest version, it goes
A long time ago, there were people in Canada who did some artistic
things. But then, some other people came from Europe, and gradually replaced
and improved the original artistic activities with many artistic developments that
advanced art in Canada (including for those earlier peoples), to the present
This is what some may refer to as the master narrative of Canadian art. It is what
stories also try to find ruptures within it. For even then, the dominant master narrative is
the dominant master narrative. In other words, even after much postcolonial criticism
(not all) has done its job, it can often still remain exceedingly difficult to imagine
ourselves beyond the master narrative at all. It is often portrayed by postcolonial critics
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as so dominant and pervasive that this characteristic both fuels postcolonial criticism,
and significantly weakens it, for the master narrative is sustained by the very discussion
reliant on it, even while holding it in contempt. Although very important, nevertheless, its
flashes and breaths of fresh air are ever-vulnerable to the same stifling weight it is trying
to lift. In a more elaborate form, the conventional story of art in Canada goes something
like this:
A long time ago, Indigenous peoples inhabited what is now called Canada,
living on the land, and creating functional items that reflected this. These items
often contained much aesthetic beauty as well, but they might not really be called
some of this same land. These incomers brought with them the first real
techniques, knowledge, and styles of “art,” which often took the form of amateur,
or naïve, religious and votive painting, carving, and sculpture. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, more and more Europeans had now arrived, and England
started to take control of the balance of power in the new land from France. This
brought in a new group of military settlers, explorers, and artists who, although
could accurately paint and map the new territory for British reconnaissance and
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painting, which hinted at the artistic progress that was to come. From this point,
until around the middle of the nineteenth century, the art in this place continued
handling, better style and execution, and better technique through popular trends
Europe at the time. Most of the artists were immigrant Europeans, although the
developmental heights. To begin with, we now see the arrival of the first two
significant artists in Canada: Cornelius Krieghoff and Paul Kane. These artists
brought the standards for technical skill, and aesthetic conception up a level
scenes, Aboriginal culture, and various depictions of ways these unfolded in the
landscape. Their art raised the popularity of Canadian art, establishing the
conditions that enabled the first Canadian artists societies and schools.
Confederation in 1867 eventually led key artists of the day to band together, and
Canada was a part of the British Empire and this new institution, founded in
1880, would be similarly encouraged by the British monarchy, and have the title:
academicians raised the standards of artistic skill, execution, and conception yet
again. Almost always correlative with political ambitions for capitalist expansion
and national unity, these artists most frequently painted landscape art—the genre
most associated with capitalism and nationalism—in the tradition of its European
Romanticist roots. By the end of the century, Canadian artists flocked to Europe
to learn all the latest techniques and styles, and keep art in the young Canada
progressing with the art of the rest of the world. Before long, the importation of
formation of the Group of Seven in 1920. The Group comprised the most
important and pivotal figures in the establishment of the first official “national
school” of art. They advocated for a non-academic style that could, once and for
all, free Canadian art from its perceived dependence on European techniques
and exemplars, and be distinctly “Canadian.” The only logical exemplar for such
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an endeavour in their minds was not European art and tradition, but the
Canadian landscape itself. Modern European techniques and styles were still
deemed best to express this land, however, because they were much more open
to the shifting, colourful world around, and less beholden to the entrenched
“Canada.”
reactionist trends that opposed the privileging of landscape art in this way. These
other artists countered the influence of the Group by emphasizing the importance
of figure painting, art containing more overt social commentary, and, eventually,
abstraction by the 1950s. They drew heavily again on European and Euro-
American techniques and styles for their foundation and exemplars, and
Nationalist issues started to become less important than more universal social-
political and aesthetic issues. Ever since the middle of the twentieth century,
artists continued in this vein, variously alternating between landscape art, other
art. Postmodernism, the latest wave of European thought and practice to inform
the Canadian artworld, from around the 1970s onward, further reinforced this
new pluralism and diversity in artistic styles, subject matter, and mediums. Artists
adapted photography, video and technology, pop culture, material objects, and
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techniques, and they increasingly drew from them to comment on their own
The above is obviously a bland retelling of the conventional story. I could have
spiced it up with various internal storylines, and exciting subplots full of interesting
numerous points. Many Canadian art historians, of course, do include some of these
story capacities in their stories. In general, however, this is the story that Canadian art
collectively tells and reinforces in the vast majority of Canadian art histories,
augmenting through the decades with each new artistic development. It is a story,
indeed, that reports truth. It is real and important and powerful, as stories are. It is also
has worked. It has, for example, helped perform and summon up Aboriginal isolated
culture and postcolonial critical stories, as well as nationalistic fervour and many
interested viewers at various times. Yet, in my view, there are other ways some of our
powerful visual art connects and interweaves into another kind of story of art in Canada.
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The story that the art of Lucius O’Brien (1832-1899), generally tells in current Canadian
art history is predominantly one of Victorian nationalism. The aesthetic referent for this
O’Brien’s work. Reid has been the main purveyor of this story. His catalogue for the first
begins with an introduction about how “Not long ago the term Victorian was pejorative,”
but is not any longer, as Canadians have come to realize their indebtedness to the
major developments of Victoria’s reign in England.202 Reid remarks that, “in spite of
many factors that today seem so evidently to have militated against a successful
transplant [of the British system to Canada]”—of which first on his list is “the persistent
Even when other commentators are less reverent with regard to the Victorian impacts
on Canada, such as art historian Leslie Dawn, O’Brien is still directly associated with its
nationalist/imperialist project, for better or worse.204 For Reid, the work of O’Brien was
one of the most influential products embodying these “formative values of his time and
place.”205 The subsequent chapters of his catalogue then mine data from many of
O’Brien’s artworks and biographical details illustrating their, and the artist’s, fundamental
The most common details art historians (both before and after Reid), have
emphasized while discussing O’Brien in this way have been threefold. First, the
Marquis of Lorne, the Princess Louise, and many British artists—which is associated
with his appointment as first president of the RCA in 1880.206 Second, his centrality to
Canada in 1882.207 And finally, his aesthetic association with various nineteenth-century
European art movements, styles, and ideologies, such as the picturesque, romanticism,
and some of their by-products, including the Barbizon School, the Pre-Raphaelite circle,
and Luminism.208 The narrative skeleton underwriting the conventional story of O’Brien’s
art is that because O’Brien’s life included the above Victorian elements, his depiction of
This story unfolds in articulations like this: O’Brien painted Canadian scenes in
elegant proportions, with attention to form, and near geometric perfection, so what
or William G. R. Hind.209 Similarly, O’Brien put so much detail and wonder into his
paintings of Canadian scenes that what must explain this is that he read Ruskin, or saw
paintings of places in Canada are evocative and lyrical, with sunlight flooding in, and
Hudson River School and Albert Bierstadt.211 O’Brien also painted leisure boats on the
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water in some of these Canadian places, and this is because he was most interested in
scenes are peaceful and orderly, and this is because of his “gentlemanly comportment,”
Crown.”213 To mention one more, O’Brien painted landscapes of Canadian places and
Aboriginal peoples, so what must explain this is his Victorian imperialism shaped by
These are all good stories, and certainly convey a truth. I am not suggesting that
they should have no place in our story of O’Brien’s art, or art in Canada more generally.
They are, after all, some of the crucial stories summoning up my own story now. The
issue with emphasizing only these kinds of stories in Canadian art history, rather, is that
they all assume the “Canadian scenes” themselves have absolutely no agency in the
performance of O’Brien’s art. They assume that O’Brien’s sensuous encounter with the
more-than-human world around him was largely in a passive state, generally producing
from Europe. Such assumptions flatten, what Abram calls, “the wild contingency” of
O’Brien’s own existence, and by extension, his art’s. Yes, O’Brien was interested in
Armstrong and Hind, but the form and proportion of his La Roche Percé (1882), for
example, was also in part precisely that of Percé Rock’s on the tip of Québec’s Gaspé
Peninsula, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and not just a reflection of the influence of
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Armstrong or Hind. Yes, O’Brien’s parents were respectable loyalists, he was friends
with the Marquis of Lorne, and probably read Ruskin, but the order and detail of his
Under the Cliffs, Port Stanley (1873), was also precisely that of the cliffs and main
beach at Port Stanley, on the north shore of Lake Erie, and not just a reflection of the
was part of the imperialistic picturesque movement of Georgian and Victorian England,
but this also gave him countless opportunities to rupture its abstracted ideologies
imported from another place. This occurred not because of some unique “genius” he
alone possessed as an artist, but because travelling to sketch and paint allowed artists
entities. This manifested conditions within which the imported ideology inscribing them
as entirely inanimate objects could also be challenged. O’Brien had even more
inclination towards such rapport than most artists around him at the time—who were
largely immigrants—because this was his home, which physically encompassed and
participated in his life in vastly different ways than it would have even in that of his own
As Abram has remarked, “We may conceive of earthly reality as though we were
not ourselves of it, but we can never really perceive it as such.”215 The story of O’Brien’s
art is the story of an embodied experiencer performing, and being performed by, the
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solidarity between the human animal and the animate earth as it particularly occurred in
his native place—especially around the Lake Simcoe basin where he was born and
raised. On one level, the imported conceptions and stories of his parents, friends, and
most of the Canadian artworld around him at the time were active participants in his life.
But on a deeper level, O’Brien’s artworks also embody and enact a complex set of
world. His is an art process that occurred from the ground up, subsequently enveloping
not just incorporate O’Brien’s disembodied mind and art from the top down.
I do not wish to bring a storied approach to O’Brien’s art in order to offer another
explanation of it. Instead, it hope to amplify some key formal elements—what I might
call his personal visual story capacities—that emerge from his sensate reciprocity with
the animate earth around him. These elements, in turn, will gesture towards us,
beckoning our attention to the need for approaching his art with much more cross-
cultural awareness. The form O’Brien’s stories take, as many art historians have already
acknowledged, is indeed a highly ordered and detailed one. Approaching this like a
dynamic story, and not just like an imitative Victorian representation, however, reveals
that this order is primarily a holistic, place-based order (enveloping and adapting some
Victorian ideas and techniques), and not purely a Victorian ideological one, whatever its
sources in O’Brien’s life. It will be helpful now to explore some of the story being told,
☈⊕♁
O’Brien was born and raised through his formative years in a relatively remote log
house called “The Woods” on the northwest shore of Lake Simcoe (Kempenfelt Bay), in
Upper Canada (Fig. 2). The house played a central role in establishing the settlement of
Shanty Bay, and was fondly remembered by at least one visitor as “a perfect gem...set
in the wildest of natural surroundings.”216 This was almost all O’Brien would know until
the age of twelve or thirteen.217 It was built just in time for his birth in the summer of
1832, and, like most good stories, it was built with a lot of help from many characters:
people, but also trees, rocks, meadows, beavers, bears, and the lake itself.
Lake Simcoe was and is the heartbeat of life in the area. It roots the inseparable
curvatures of time and space between the Oro and Oak Ridges Moraines—the Lake
Ontario and Lake Huron pulsating around and through it. Every place has its particular
curvatures and rhythms—its story. These rhythms and its story are of the place, but they
are not its alone. They are ever intertwined along pulsating and dynamic edges shared
with other ever-shifting beings, entities, and systems all unfolding within the larger story
always encompassing it. In Abram’s eloquent words, a place’s rhythms are “its unique
ways of sprouting and unfurling and giving birth to itself again and again—as the world
itself turns and returns, and as indeed the best stories are told over and over again.”218
One of the main rhythms resonating through—or ordering—the story of the Lake
Simcoe area is that of its rising, lowering, flowing, and life-shaping water. This has
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resonated through the colossal pressing and melting of glacial ice over probing granitic
bedrock, limestone, and shale. It has echoed in the swirling between the cooling and
heating of wind and water and seasons over the spellbinding blanket of sediment. It has
summoned up the dancing between the birch tree, the sawfly, and the trout. And
returned again in the singing between the voices of the loon and the fishermen keeping
time with their paddles. These rhythms are still storying the Lake Simcoe area today, for
Simcoe and its watershed supports Ontario’s “highest angling effort of any inland
lake.”219 This is, of course, the exact same story in O’Brien’s life too, when the area was
“preeminently the angler’s paradise. In no other country on the surface of the earth is
there a chain, so extensive and closely connected of lake and river and streamlet, as
that which stretches from the estuary of the St. Lawrence westward.”220 It is also
participant in the massive emergence unfurling between Lakes Simcoe, Huron, Ontario,
and the Great Lakes basin, which resonates in the story of the world with almost 25% of
its fresh water, and the alluring banks of the St. Lawrence River itself.
This rhythm is so particular to this place that it could only have sprouted bald
eagles, and not eagle rays; it could only have sprouted lake whitefish and not two-
spined blackfish. It could only have sprouted Wendats, and not Haidas. And it could only
have animated and instigated English immigrants and their native-born children in
exactly the way it did. In other words, the migration and unfurling life experience stories
of the above peoples in this place, I believe, is not due to social and historical forces
alone. These forces are necessarily shaped in large part by the natural forces they are
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FIG. 2. Map of southern Ontario with key places mentioned in this dissertation. Troy
Patenaude.
already nested within. Nobody can exist here for long, as in any place, without being
When the O’Briens decided to move to Lake Simcoe they were already part of a
much larger story unfolding around them. To merely say they moved because of British
immigration from the States; support the incredibly important through-route between
York (Lake Ontario) and Penetanguishene (Lake Huron); and strengthen the influence
of the British Crown—is, while conveying a truth, also short-sighted, at best, and
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arrogant, at worst. The very integrity of the O’Briens’ thoughts, words, and actions
depends on the particular ways their sensate bodies could only have performed in
reciprocity with the animate earth always enveloping and exceeding them.
The immigrant communities of African American slaves around Lake Simcoe and the
Penetanguishene Road significantly increased in the 1810s and 20s, stimulating the
related increase of British half-pay officers in the area to help manage it. O’Brien’s
father was one of these officers, but these communities did not arise here merely
because he, or other British loyalists, decided it, but also because the land in part called
it forth. Here, they were naturally, almost directly in between Lake Huron and Lake
Ontario, whose formations and influences, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with
the newcomer British loyalists. Not surprisingly, then, it is here too where fluctuating
fears and threats of American invasion after the War of 1812 were, naturally, most
extreme. The O’Briens’ arrival is simply another articulation of the same story the region
spoke 10,000 to 11,000 years earlier when “immigrant” communities of caribou and
“manage” it, because of “extreme fluctuations in lake levels,” which were threatening
from its close interrelationship with the very same Huron and Ontario lake basins.221
relationship quickly unfurled into an important economic and political through-route for
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the British. O’Brien’s father travelled it very frequently, and his work often overlapped
with its larger unfurling story. For example, he was contributing to the region at a time
when military bases, settlements, trading posts, fisheries, and road and transportation
improvements were increasing along this through-route. Yet, this is also another
articulation of the place-based story echoed here through the Wendats—a name that
has been associated with the traditional meaning for “people dwelling in the vicinity of
bays and inlets of a large body of water.”222 During the Hypsithermal Interval
(4,000-8,000 B.P.) and beyond, the Wendats also maintained continued use of this
Lake Ontario and Lake Huron.223 This same route stimulated seventy Wendat village
sites, a wide network of trails, the Mnjikaning Fish Weirs, many other fishing sites, and
gathering places from which to share and trade with other nations, just like it did for the
Finally, the motivation to strengthen the influence of the British Crown by moving
to Lake Simcoe was neither merely a human decision. This is not say to that the land is
a sentient decision maker on its own, but that human decisions are fundamentally
shaped and summoned up by the particular relationship between land, waterways, and
carnal immersions encompassed by them. In this vein, I suggest that there is no one
complete decision maker, neither human, nor non-human, at all, but, like Abram, more
For example, the story of the British Crown’s interest in the area also echoed
to help scatter the Iroquois and bolster trade alliances around the important eastern
Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River with the Wendats, in the name of the French
Crown.225 The story unfurled again within a different articulation through the Iroquois (c.
1550-1650), who strengthened and imposed their claim over this crucial area and its
resources by scattering the Wendats.226 Then it unfurled again through the O’Briens,
and other British settlers, who in the performance of the same place-based story,
displaced the Anishinabeg and Métis around Lake Simcoe and the Penetanguishene-
Simcoe corridor.227 Cultural and socio-political forces, of course, are characters in these
larger stories, but they can never fully extinguish the sensate participation between our
animal bodies and the animate, creative matter that always encompasses and exceeds
them. This particular, largely waterborne, rhythm of the place returned again in the
dreaming of The Woods, where O’Brien learned how to fish, and paint, and was, in turn,
The tangible life and pulse of the water and Lake Simcoe itself made its presence
felt in the lives of O’Brien’s parents, Mary and Edward, from the minute they entered the
Lake Simcoe basin during their move. In her journals, Mary complained that their
journey took a lot longer than they expected, for they had “to stop ever and anon to
make a bridge over some hole or puddle which the thaw had brought to light.”229 When
they finally did arrive at their lodgings on the south side of Kempenfelt Bay (where they
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were going to live while their house was being built on the north side), the water
changed their plans again. The quickest way to get to the north side of the lake in winter
was to cross over the solid ice on foot or in a sleigh. The O’Briens arrived in early April,
however, and the lake had already started to thaw. They decided to rush their move and
hurry across the ice “to get housed by the night, for the weather was too fair to be
trusted with the care of the ice.”230 Their instincts were sound, for as they were still
unpacking on the shore, the oxen that were being brought in behind them fell through
the ice into the lake. This set off a dramatic scene of shouting and running, including the
breaking through of a horse during the attempt to rescue the oxen. After all was settled
again, the location the O’Briens chose to build The Woods was equally embedded in the
After scouting out the land from a vista above, Edward eventually chose to build
just up from the lake amidst a “strip of cedar swamp of varying width in which cedars of
enormous growth, a few scattered pine, and both spruce and balsam were to be
found.”231 The particular pulse and rhythms of a place, however, also have a knack of
entering into bodies. What starts to become clear early on in the journal entries is that
Edward did not simply choose this place, but it also chose him. “The site,” said Mary a
few days after arriving, “pleases us more and more each day.”232 It was actively doing
something to them, changing them day by day, even if they could only intellectually
comprehend or explain it from their side of the relationship as “pleasing” them. The
surrounding cedars were not inert, determinate objects to their sensate bodies, but
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equally, dynamically, and enigmatically influencing the space around themselves too.
The cedars even “named” the O’Briens before the O’Briens would eventually name
them and their place “Shanty Bay.” The original name Edward and Mary “gave” their
house was “Cedargrove Hall.” This was the name that sprouted in mutual interchange
between the O’Briens’ animal bodies and the pulsating influence of the cedars. The
much more distant and impersonal name, “The Woods,” was the one given it later by
Mary’s family in England through correspondence.233 Her family had never been there,
and so to them that is all the place could be, an abstract bunch of “woods.” This is what
similarly happens in our art histories when encountering art here through predominantly
Eurocentric understandings alone, but now I am getting ahead of myself. The O’Briens
had clearly begun to render themselves vulnerable to the place in a way that allowed
each to enter into the other—allowing the place, the cedar swamp, to start speaking
within the ecological order of a nearby meadow in the cedar swamp. They walked often
to this meadow and eventually started using it for hay. They discovered it could have a
was absent, but there was enough water retained in the earth for the grasses to keep
from drying out completely, which would have precluded their use for hay. At the same
time, there was not so much water retained that the grasses were completely inhibited
from drying at all. They were able to dry out just the right amount for the O’Briens to
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happily skip the crucial drying stage of the haymaking process.235 While the O’Briens
may not have conceptually known why this was the case, they perceived it as such,
which sensuously embedded them in the holistic order of the place in a deeper way.
This order not only encompassed the cedar swamp, the meadow, its grasses, the
O’Briens, and their haymakers, but it was a particular meadow “which,” as Mary
recognized, “the beavers were so good as to clear for us in times of yore.”236 The
beavers’ maintenance and regulation of the place’s water—its quality, flow, storage,
tables (improving the vigour and drought-tolerance of its grasses). The beavers’
woodcutting also opened up the forest cover just enough to allow the sun in for
drying.237 The holistic order and ecological intelligence of the place subsequently
performed the O’Briens’ actions in it. Mary’s journal entries reveal that encounters with
pleasing, even inspiring her on one occasion to recall childhood enjoyment of flowers
and shrubberies in Somerset.238 Her buoyant and enriched state of being in the
meadow, one that could physically lighten her step, was buoyed by the unfurling rhythm
☈⊕♁
In the midst of all this place-based emergence around Lake Simcoe, young Lucius was
born. While Mary mentions O’Brien taking to art like “a born artist” as early as a year
and a half old, the first two mentions of O’Brien’s involvement in any activity other than
baby-related concerns are: a boat trip across the lake with Mary and Willy (O’Brien’s
older brother), and spending family time one “evening…[loitering] out on the lake.”239
Edward, a former navy midshipman and sailor in the merchant marine, is known to have
loved the water and sailing, but this would only have helped reinforce the place-based
rhythms of the water already enveloping and resonating through young O’Brien in his
native place. The enigmatic, ever-shifting cosmos of Lake Simcoe ultimately holds the
key to the abstract, provisional, mathematically precise kind of order hidden behind
O’Brien’s perceivable surroundings, and in his art. It is an earthly cosmos of not only the
lake itself, but ground, wind, rain, bears, immigrants, and the hundreds of other native-
Potawatomis, and Odawas at various times—all participant in the order of the lake.
Two days after O’Brien was born, Mary was full of adoration: “Baby is getting
quite pretty, dark complexioned with black hair, like a young bear.”240 Far from being
merely a flippant statement, this illustrates the extent to which O’Brien was intricately
interwoven within the place-based awareness and story of the Lake Simcoe basin, even
through the shifting perceptions and developing connections of his immigrant parents.
Bears frequented the Lake Simcoe basin. They came in search of a good berry patch in
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the summer (the O’Briens had a nearby wild strawberry patch they would harvest241);
maybe some beech or ash nuts in the autumn; or maybe some fish. Within a few days
of Mary’s statement, the O’Briens saw a bear walking through the forest around The
Woods. The encounter unfolded not with fear and sentimentalism, but with practicality,
and even a level of respect. Edward shot the bear so they could respectfully use it. Mary
butchered it, stretched the skin to dry, and gifted the meat to a neighbour. Once the
leatherworking process was completed by the following spring, Mary apparently used
the hide to make O’Brien a pair of moccasins to encourage him to walk: “he no sooner
felt them under his feet than he set off and ran two or three times the whole length of
the house.”242
Cobblers in Upper Canada at this time were changing their imported, less
effective shoe designs to incorporate moccasin styles and techniques. As Mary learned
first-hand, these were more practical to make, as well as to wear and use in the
particular terrain and climate of their place.243 The process worked so well that the
O’Briens did it again. A few years later, after the birth of O’Brien’s younger brother
Henry, Mary made plans to make a pair of boots out of another bear’s hide for O’Brien’s
younger sister, as well as either sleeves or leggings for O’Brien and his two brothers. “A
magnificent animal the bear is,” she said, “Even when dead there was a spirit about
him.”244 Many intellectuals today sadly jump on every nature or indigenous culture
fanciful nostalgia. Not all instances of this are misguided, of course, but as O’Brien
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As early as O’Brien could walk he was getting to know the lake. He and Willy
would early-on beg their parents for excursions on the water, whether to go see the
construction of new wharfs, or just to learn how to paddle. While Edward and Mary were
working on or near their own landing at the lake, they would let O’Brien and Willy (two
and three years old, respectively), paddle around in the boat on their own by tying it to
the wharf for safety.245 Soon after, O’Brien was helping to paddle his mother along the
shoreline to visit neighbours.246 Some of the neighbours they might have seen around
the lake and The Woods during these excursions included members of the African
American community who had escaped into Canada along the Underground Railway.
There were also many British immigrants nearby, some of which Edward and Mary
became good friends with. Many of these African American and British immigrants were
spread out along the shore around The Woods, contributing to the settlements of
Shanty Bay, Hawkestone, and Kempenfelt. The shores and lands on the south side of
Kempenfelt Bay (and Lake Simcoe as a whole), were generally more heavily populated,
The O’Briens also had regular visits with many Anishinabe people and families
from around the lake. There were three Chippewa bands (around 600 people altogether
by some accounts), moving throughout the area around O’Brien’s home at Lake
Simcoe. One was in the care of Chief William Yellowhead; another in that of Chief
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Joseph Snake; and the third in that of Chief John Assance.247 Around the time of
O’Brien’s birth, the bands formed an alliance to help mitigate the disturbing impacts of
sustaining farming community for the Chippewas. The reserve was a long and narrow
stretch of land that ran from Lake Simcoe (just up the shore from and behind The
key component of the reserve was the support and guidance it received from the highly-
raised by his Mississauga mother, and dedicated champion of his Anishinabe people.
The Assance band settled in the reserve closer to Lake Huron, and tended
Assiginack (Jean-Baptiste Blackbird), who moved there in 1832.251 The Yellowhead and
Snake bands settled in the narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching, and
embraced Jones’s Methodism. The Yellowhead band continued to hunt and fish
throughout the northern parts of Lake Simcoe; the connected Lake Couchiching; in the
narrows between the lakes (the long-used Wendat fishing weirs); and north of the
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reserve on the east side of Matchedash Bay. The Snake band continued to hunt and
fish throughout Lake Simcoe itself, and especially along its southern shores and
islands.252 In 1836, the policies and agenda of the new Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Francis
surrender” of land forcing the Chippewas to separate and move deeper into these
traditional territories.253 Yellowhead’s band purchased land on the other side of the
narrows (Rama). Snake’s went to Snake Island, and then on to Georgina Island, in Lake
Simcoe. And Assance’s went further into Lake Huron to Beausoleil Island, and then on
Amidst all of this movement around Lake Simcoe, many Chippewa hunters,
gatherers, guides, and families often stopped at The Woods for various reasons.
Sometimes they visited to trade fish and game for flour, or to warm up by the fire inside
after cold winter hunting trips.254 After 1835, the area along the north shore of Lake
Simcoe had its first direct mail service from Barrie (the western tip of Kempenfelt Bay),
and the postman was a Chippewa. He regularly visited the O’Briens to chat, share a
pipe and smoke, and dry his moccasins by their fire.255 The O’Briens and various
Chippewa Christian converts would likely have met during religious ceremonies
ongoing emergence of Lake Simcoe life, as it always had: the O’Briens’ and their friends
grew “Indian corn”; they started picking up on some traditional language words; and
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Mary apparently learned first hand about some traditional medicines and leatherworking
techniques.257
near and far would come to Lake Simcoe to camp, meet, trade, and share, just up the
Holland River from the southern tip of Lake Simcoe. This place became the commons
from which the government’s annual distribution of presents to the Indigenous peoples
of the area occurred. It became the landing and embarkation point for the steamboat on
Lake Simcoe, which started up—with Edward as a shareholder in its joint stock
company—just after O’Brien’s birth. The steamboat became the most efficient mode of
transporting passengers and freight around Lake Simcoe.258 The O’Briens, on any given
trip between York (Toronto) or Thornhill (where some of the extended family resided),
and Shanty Bay would have passed through this well-known gathering place. Mary
described one such trip—where she visited with some of the inhabitants—in her journal.
The long entry included accounts of: some of its collection of wigwams, canoes, and
blanket tents; its Anishinabe, Iroquois, British, French, and Métis traders and inhabitants
speaking, what to Mary seemed, “indifferently in Indian, French, or English in the most
ludicrous confusion”; some traditional singing, dancing, and pipe smoking; and visits
with Aboriginal women walking around with babies in cradleboards, like “little living
mummies,” and at a tent making birch bark baskets and sewing gowns with them.259
Returning to the O’Briens’ excursions on the lake, they clearly would have
contingent on this place. Some clearly helped directly to open the O’Briens up even
more to the place-based order they were immersed in around Lake Simcoe, whether
they were fully aware of it or not. On one such occasion, a Chippewa man shared so
much knowledge with Edward and Mary about crossing the ice of Kempenfelt Bay one
particularly warm day in April that they retraced their journey by two miles to stay
safe.260 On another, Edward and Mary canoed with an Ojibway man across Lake
Couchiching from the Simcoe narrows to the home of an Elder, who shared with them “a
very good report of the land in general.”261 On another occasion, the O’Briens had to
paddle across the particularly calm water late one night, and not being able to see that
well by moonlight alone, they had to put another practical technique they learned from
the place and its unfurling story to good use: they “kept the oars to time by singing.”262
participations with the other beings around the lake in, what Abram calls, “the ongoing
emergence of the real.”263 Direct evidence of this in O’Brien’s life is also hinted at in
Mary’s journals. One such instance occurred while paddling back to The Woods one
day with Mary and his siblings. Passing by a “low flowery point,” Mary recorded, “the
children were in ecstasies” with the place and all its flowers: they were compelled to
stop and take it all in.264 This episode in Mary’s journals is telling, for it also starts to hint
at some of the incredible differences between Mary—an immigrant born and rooted in
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another place (even though this one was now working through her too, according to the
dispositions of her embodied immersion in it)—and her own children—born and rooted
When they alighted on the shore, O’Brien and his siblings, “in ecstasies,” were
always fully immersed within the terrain. Their carnal awareness of these ambiguous
and enigmatic flowers’ sustained the flowers’ living power to influence other beings
around them, just as they were influencing, ordering, performing the children into
ecstasies. Mary, however, while touched by “the rose-scented air...most grateful to [her]
senses,” could also not help but contradict her own carnal awareness by immediately
separating herself from the Lake Simcoe cosmos, in order to “get a specimen” of one of
the lilies to give to her brother, a medical doctor and zoologist in England. It might be
argued that this episode is more likely indicative of a response by children compared to
that of an adult. On one level it is, but that is also partly the point. As environmental
concerning the innately important ability of children to naturally sink into the mystery,
life, and reciprocal participation of the animate earth. Without this vital link intact,
children and the adults they grow into become increasingly prone to what Louv has
termed “nature-deficit disorder.”265 Although Mary O’Brien almost certainly would not
have suffered from such a disorder to the same extent children and adults of today
might, the difference between her “response” to the flowers near Lake Simcoe and her
difference in age alone. Her children’s “response” to the flowers is more indicative than
not of the reciprocally participatory relationship between animal bodies and the animate
earth I am outlining.
The Lake Simcoe cosmos also shifted through O’Brien like it did through the
seasons. The northwest shore of the lake was susceptible to higher levels of
precipitation than elsewhere in the basin because of lake effect moisture carried over on
the wind from Lake Huron.266 During heavy rains, the family liked gathering “very cosily
by...a very tolerable winter fire,” but O’Brien also enjoyed being out in the snow.267 He
returned “bright and gay” after long sleigh rides around the frozen lake, and enjoyed
“scampering...about the ice [when] in beautiful order for walking.”268 The “order” of the
ice/lake was clearly not always in sync with Mary’s thoughts of orderliness, but whether
she intellectually knew it or not, it had the most profound ordering effect over the lives of
her entire family, especially her children—as it did over all beings who constituted the
place.
One of the persistently recurring themes throughout the whole of Mary’s journals
after their move to Lake Simcoe was, without a doubt, the incredible amount of time the
O’Briens had to spend waiting for the steamer at the lake; waiting for supplies that were
held up because the steamer was late in its waterborne journey; waiting for the lake ice
to thaw; waiting for the ice to be safe enough to walk on; waiting for the steamer to bring
them helpers, family, or their children back from visits elsewhere; being slowed up in the
sleigh crossing the lake because of the higher accumulations of snow over the ice;
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thankfully glimpsing the light of the steamer rounding the corner into Kempenfelt Bay;
getting alerted or beckoned into action at the sound of the steamer’s bell in the distance;
covering up the kids from the strong and cold north wind blowing out on the open lake;
being so tired from having to walk overland somewhere that they had to borrow a boat
to return home safely over the lake; waiting for the steamboat again, which got stuck on
a shoal in the lake for days, completely upsetting their human plans; setting plans aside
again because of having to rescue oxen or mares that fell through the ice; and again
because the ever-shifting, frozen lake was melting sooner than expected; and then
waiting, again, for the steamboat to take Edward away on business, or bring him home
The lake, in other words, in all of its capriciousness, power, and life, had
completely ordered the O’Briens’ entire embodied existences. It was directly participant
in when and how they could get a lot of their food; when they could get supplies to
repair their house; how they could physically move around; how they got mail and most
of their communications; when they could spend time together as a family or with
friends; and how they came to relate to the more-than-human world around them. The
solidarity between O’Brien’s animal body and the animate earth around The Woods
continued to deepen and unfold in new articulations throughout his life. Even after the
O’Briens moved to Toronto in the mid-1840s, they continued to spend their summers at
The Woods. O’Brien would also eventually move back to Lake Simcoe in the late 1850s
for about another decade of his life. He also journeyed through the region on early
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sketching trips throughout the 1850s and 60s, which provided him with sketches that
would summon up paintings even decades later. It is also not just coincidence that the
first evidence we have of him doing professional art at all includes drawings of a bear
and a cedar swamp in 1849, even while living in Toronto; nor that the dominant element
ordering his artistic production throughout his entire life was, indeed, water.269 A
profound place-based awareness sprouted through him, even if he was not necessarily
intellectually aware of it, and even if at that same time it could be influenced or stifled by
and through Archibald can help elucidate how the sensuous terrain was working on or
The stories that I really remembered were ones that I did not set out to
consciously try to remember...It was as though these stories became embedded
in my body, in my emotional being, in my consciousness, and in my spirit.270
Such awareness unfurled through O’Brien when he was a child every spring with “the
occurrence of a strong breeze which [had] broken up and almost carried away the
ice...of which [he had] for some days been watching and speculating upon with some
anxiety.” This physically compelled him into new ways of being, where “instead of biting
[his] bread into cutters, [he was] turning [his] teaspoons into oars.”271 It also continued
later in life with the emergence of the unique, ecological, formal system of his paintings.
After many years of keeping her journal, Mary suddenly stopped writing in 1838.
This was not before, however, finally arriving at the doorway to a profound awareness.
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She noticed one day just how much the lake and its rhythms had enigmatically
The long expected steamboat has at length arrived and been received with a
degree of excitement which is almost ludicrous, but towards the end of winter
[when the lake has thawed] everything in the way of carriage and travelling
becomes dependent...so that in reality all your comfort, if not your existence,
comes to be connected with it (my emphasis).272
any more of her journals in which to read about how this same story may have
continued to unfurl while the O’Briens were there. But we do have Lucius’s art, and the
story it tells picks up from where the lake’s, in all its wild contingency and emergence,
left off.
☈⊕♁
O’Brien recommitted himself to art in 1873 with renewed vigour and a profound sense
that he still had a story to tell. He exhibited one oil and nine watercolours in the OSA
exhibition that year. They were all widely appreciated, according to fellow-artist Robert
F. Gagen, and by the end of the decade, as Reid has pointed out, “O’Brien was
regarded as the best of the painters.”273 As alluded to above, two qualities in general
tended to characterize O’Brien’s art for reviewers, and set it apart from other works in
their critiques. First, was its order and precision. The kind of sentiment expressed by
The Canadian Monthly in 1877, for example, was common: “coolness and clearness
and realism, in a great sense, are the artist’s peculiar excellence.”274 The other quality
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oft-referred to was a little more difficult to describe or explain for viewers. One called it
nature.” This reinforced for many that “No other painter [seemed] to understand Nature
like Mr. O’Brien.”275 Another reviewer described it as “thought and feeling...which grows
on the mind the longer [his paintings] are studied.” Another could only find words to say
that O’Brien’s work was “replete with the true poetry of art.”276
Monthly after seeing the important OSA exhibition in 1873. An elaboration of his
whole. According to the reviewer, for such a young and developing artworld as
Canada’s, the exhibition “surprised” him. But although there were works of high merit
and charm, he remarked that “a refined and cultivated taste is not to be looked for
among the native products of our Canadian clearings.” The exhibition was dominated by
landscape paintings, which this reviewer did not mind so much, but the main issue was
had plenty of accuracy of detail, very valuable as artistic study; but wanted the
breadth of effect which is needed to make a picture. Photography will give the
detail of the landscape under any light and shade, and from any point of view; but
the art of the true artist is required...just as the poet makes ‘a thing of beauty’ out
of what seems homely and prosaic to the common eye.277
O’Brien’s art clearly possessed a capacity beyond mere perception or representation for
this viewer (and many others since). As with all the best stories, something “grabbed”
him, captured his imagination, through O’Brien’s stories. He could not fully explain it in
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words other than through recourse to the nebulous word “art,” and the feeling that the
full “breadth” of O’Brien’s picture also included something beyond mere precision in
art is not explained by the ecological order, but a retelling of it—its story—that was now
performatively unfurling through his practice of painting, and creating new connections.
There are two unique, often overlapping, elements, or visual story capacities,
emphasizes human drama, or what art historian Greg M. Thomas has called “social
narratives.” Doing so accentuates, instead, his paintings’ “earth narratives,” and the
contingency of the social narratives on them. In Thomas’s words, “Earth narratives refer
to the actions of animals, trees, weather, and the earth itself; they...remain perpetually
open-ended; and they occur slowly and invisibly, on a scale of time that exceeds our
powers of perception.”278 To this list I would also add that they occur in the round—
circularly, spirally, and with curvature—which, as we shall see, is particular and crucial
Thomas has also observed, still relied primarily on its social narrative to create
meaning. This might be through the presence of a harvester and wagon (or the absence
of a ploughman from a plough), to give purpose to the field; or a human encounter in the
distance on a country road to give meaning to the forest; or a fishing boat to give
in O’Brien’s paintings, and sometimes seems outright challenged. When the characters
foreground to mid-ground, they are a focal point that, on one hand, may seem to
emphasize the social narrative in the story. But on the other hand, the social narrative is
usually disrupted, held, slowed, or acted upon in some way by the earth narrative, which
is frequently more than just a backdrop or stage. When the social narratives are in the
mid-ground to background of his paintings, they are similarly held, or acted upon in
some way, but in broader terms. Their purposeful movement is usually diffused either by
being caught in a proliferation of competing social narratives that only underscore the
voluminous earth narrative enveloping and performing them all; or by being tucked
away into the foliage, or dark recesses within a heavy rainstorm. They are so blended
into their surroundings, that the earth narrative unfolds as both stage and main
character. The specific aspect of the earth narrative that usually initiates the balanced
ordering in O’Brien’s paintings is more often than not water—whether in the form of a
The other element in O’Brien’s paintings through which they help perform a
rooted social-ecological story is the unique way they invite the viewer’s own
participation. Just as the social narratives in the paintings are held or slowed by its earth
narratives, the work a viewer might expect to do with the paintings is often
compromised, held, or slowed as well. In other words, the earth narratives that infuse
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and perform O’Brien’s characters, also infuse and act on the participatory viewer. To say
this yet another way, the story of the painting invites the viewer into a relationship that
can, in turn, shape his or her visual and life experience story. Of course, as discussed in
the last chapter, stories do not give answers, they merely show the way. O’Brien’s
stories will shift and work on different viewers in different ways and at different times,
but, as Archibald reminds us, there is also a “core” to stories.280 The performative core
Victorian one. What critics and commentators have done with it since—for example,
acknowledge it briefly, or most often, undermine it—does not erase this “core”, or imply
inattentiveness on the part of viewers, it just demonstrates that O’Brien’s stories are
doing exactly what stories do. They work, and allow us humans, in this case art
historians and critics, to be according to the dispositions of our carnal immersion within
them.
The formal element through which O’Brien’s stories can act on viewers consists
shoreline. This formal structure linearly ushered viewers through, out of, or over the
landscape, and often towards a town, airy clearing, the sunlight, or some other source
tradition, to name only a few, include: Marmaduke Matthews’s Hermit Range, Rocky
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Mountains (c.1888); Otto Jacobi’s Landscape (1883); Albert Bierstadt’s The Sacramento
Valley, Sunset (c.1878); Thomas Mower Martin’s Ontario Landscape (c.1890); Forshaw
Day’s Mount Cheops, in the Selkirks, B.C. (1888); and Daniel Fowler’s Figures in the
Wood, Amherst Island (1882). In O’Brien’s landscapes, while there may be a small
“opening” of some kind (often there is not even this), the viewer’s gaze is seldom guided
out, through, or over, but rather in deeper, around within, or downward. Moreover, where
the gaze may be tempted to do the former, it is also often challenged, or invited to resist
Comparing Matthews’s painting of the Hermit Range (Fig. 3), with O’Brien’s
Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel (Fig. 4), is telling. Just like the
halted, held, or slowed by its earth narrative. The smoke rising from deep down within
the painting hints at the presence of people, but they are stopped, at camp, and totally
immersed within an all-encompassing earth narrative. We cannot even see them. Within
my own body, I also feel compelled downward and inward, swallowed, in O’Brien’s
Hermit Range, as opposed to the sensate feeling of being pulled up, through, or out of it
by Matthews. One often has no choice but to stay a while, linger in O’Brien’s storied
landscape, be encompassed and exceeded by its terrain, and caught up in its place-
based circularity. This may be why viewers have tended to feel a different kind of order
O’Brien, viewers are often uniquely in and part of something larger than themselves in a
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vastly different way than was the convention—they are more frequently invited to look
and be with other entities, not merely at, over, or outside of them.
shift around with the swarm of detail (aesthetic and ecological)—from human, to human,
to boat, to rock, to water ripple, to raindrops, to patch of sunlight, to tree, to other tree—
just like the living experience of being participant in the myriad multi-sensory stimuli of
and balanced rather than hierarchical and imperious. Sometimes particular objects in
O’Brien’s paintings—like good stories, or like a deer at the edge of the forest—
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dynamically grab our attention, hold it, and seem prominent in our life for a while, but
then slip back again into the wider community of which it is part. This experience can
sometimes be so jarring or unexpected for the viewer that the free-flowing “gaze” is
physically thrown right back into the viewer’s body. Or rather, more accurately, the fact
of one’s material body can return to the viewer’s awareness because in the sensuous
more-than-human world there is no real gaze outside of a body at all. In one sense,
FIG. 4. Lucius O’Brien, Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel, 1887. Watercolour
over graphite on wove paper, 35.8 x 51.5 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
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idealism. But O’Brien’s formal system does this in a way that is particularly rooted in the
place-based awareness of his native home. It will be helpful to look at a few examples
One of the paintings O’Brien probably exhibited in 1873 was View from Pinnacle
Rock, Eastern Townships (Fig. 5)281. It depicts a scene from atop a crag on Mount
Pinnacle, overlooking two bird hunters on the edge of the cliff above Baldwin Pond, and
with the Eastern Townships and Appalachian Mountains in the distance. The viewer’s
gaze is pulled along the rock ledge at left of centre, and directed out over the landscape
towards the Eastern Townships and Appalachian river valley in the distance. This seems
at first glance to echo the traditional landscape convention, but there are also hints of it
being challenged here by the storywork of a formal system that just gets stronger and
In Pinnacle Rock, the viewer’s imperious gaze can also be disrupted. I feel
continually invited to stop mid-flight, and move downward towards the two hunters on
the edge of the cliff. Such an abrupt movement is further reinforced through the hunters,
who have also been spontaneously halted, or distracted away from their own main
activity: the social narrative of bird hunting. One of the hunters has even got down on
his hands and knees to peer safely over the cliff, further guiding the viewer’s gaze
downward and inward—into the enigmatic midst of the painting’s earth narrative. This is
encompassing and exceeding not only the hunters, but now the viewer too. The
standing hunter, moreover, does not gaze imperiously out over the landscape from his
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FIG. 5. Lucius O’Brien, View from Pinnacle Rock, Eastern Townships, 1873.
Watercolour on paper, 33.0 x 45.7 cm. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s
University, Kingston. Gift of the Estate of Mrs. R.F. Segsworth, 1944.
perch either. He is locked in this moment of being enthralled by another aspect of the
earth narrative: the bird flying below him, even further into the depths of the painting. To
take it one step further, the bird is neither just an object of the hunter’s sight, but quite
clearly an active agent in the hunter’s world who has captured him here. All human
participants have been invited to stop their activities, the social narratives playing out
encompassing and now animating them. In O’Brien’s painting, then, sensate human
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bodies are everywhere acted upon, or made to experience the animate earth, which is
One of the ways it does so in Pinnacle Rock is through the steeply eroded cliff
whose story unfurls in the very body of the first hunter. He has to physically take on the
rock’s strong, stabilizing qualities—become the rock—in order to keep from falling over
the edge. The earth narrative, however, is not hierarchically dominant over the social
narrative either. The rock does not force the hunters to do anything, or control their
stability in life, any more than the hunters are in control of the nearby birds flying freely
over the pond. Having said this, while social and earth narratives are interdependent,
and part and parcel to each other, the social narrative is ultimately encompassed and
storied by the earth narrative every time, and not the other way around. Some
include: John A. Fraser’s well-known A Shot in the Dawn, Lake Scugog (1873), and
Edward Walsh’s Old Fort with the Migration of Wild Pigeons in Spring (1804). The
characters in these stories show no sign of stopping, and even appear dominant over,
or oblivious to, the earth narrative around them. Even when O’Brien’s hunter is more in
the middle of hunting—as in Toronto, from the Marsh (1873), or his popular Lords of the
Forest (1874)—the hunter is always mindful of, or acted on by the animate and
In From the Marsh, the hunter’s success is directly contingent on his place-based
awareness and storied participation with the marsh itself, as he hides in camouflage
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behind the tall weeds and cattails. The social narrative is entirely interwoven with and
dependent on the earth narrative. Without the latter, neither the hunting, nor O’Brien’s
painting could occur in precisely the way that it does. Furthermore, although the main
subject of the painting is apparently Toronto, the city is so obscured by its distance, and
everything going on between it and the viewer (the city’s larger story enfolding it), that it
is displaced from the centrality given it by the painting’s title. The earth narrative
unfolding in the marsh and lake distract the viewer’s gaze from easily arriving at the city
at all, just as they act upon the hunter and sailboat within them. The social-ecological
however (rather than simply reversing the conventional hierarchy), because the hunter
and sailboat are still, nevertheless, integral parts of the earth narratives encompassing
In Lords (Fig. 6), the hunter is not right in the middle of his shot either, but rather
walking slowly, silently, as in a tracking mode. He astutely scans the trees and forest for
sign, and demonstrates an experience of the voluminous depths of the earth narrative
that is always open to a mindful and skillful hunter’s embodied awareness. The viewer’s
gaze mirrors this action, for while there is a small opening in the canopy of the forest in
the top right corner of the painting, the gaze is not guided there, but grabbed,
captivated, like the hunter’s invigorated senses, into the midst of the dynamic forest.
The eye may work up to the light peering through the opening, as it is conventionally
used to doing, but the leaves and branches of the foregrounded tree up the right edge
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of the painting jut out in front of the opening, partially obscuring it and throwing the
First, for me, the large tree in the centre mid-ground gestures towards the viewer.
Then the other trees, ordered to the left behind it, suddenly draw my attention back
deeper into the forest. It is so deep and thick back there, however, that I feel called back
to the centre, partly by the sunlight on the central tree and ground below it, and partly
because the branches and foliage of all the trees along the top of the painting feel like
they are pushing me back down and forward. No matter where my gaze goes, incredible
detail appears, and then melts back into the larger story of which they are a part, ever
Suddenly I notice the decomposing tree stump on the ground, narrating the
earthly story of the wind and deadfall in a recently passed storm. And as my eye moves
along its broken trunk lying on the ground, it is met by another earthly narrative: the
splash of recent autumn colouring in the foliage to the left. Then the spindly and sparse
tree trunks below that wind my attention back down even further, and back into the
centre along the earth. Like a mindful hunter, the viewer’s gaze is always held, invited to
participate, within the enveloping earth narrative. Its success depends on being able to
keep from moving linearly out or through, and instead circulating around the curvatures
of time and space rooted within this place. The viewer and hunter are ever interwoven in
the painting through its surging more-than-human world: the cycles of the seasons, the
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participant in them.
R e t u r n i n g t o Pinnacle
ecologically-ordered path
FIG. 6. Lucius O’Brien, Lords of the Forest, 1874. Watercolour continually invited to remain
on paper, 74.3 x 49.9 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of
the Government of Ontario, 1972. always within it. She is invited to
participate in the place-based and storied curvature moving through the kneeling
hunter’s body; down into the enigmatic depths of the painting along the steep cliff face
beckoning the hunter; back up along the tips of the trees and the bird hovering just
above; and then along the pointed outcrop of Pinnacle Rock to be corralled again by the
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hard-edged shoreline running perpendicular to the viewer’s gaze, and funnelling it back
down into the painting again along the wind-swept trees on the right of the cliff.
This is the place-based story that has been rhythmically unfurling here for
millennia. The perfect habitat for myriad birds has emerged through the dialogical
reciprocity particular to this place: between the stability of the captivating rock amidst
the erosive flushes of rain and water that have shorn its steep face before rejoining
Baldwin Pond, and the intermingling wind that has swept the trees atop it. This
particular story, in turn, also animates and instigates hunters: peregrine falcons and
humans. To this day it is one of the foremost places in the region for birdwatchers,
especially falconers, and hunters, even if now only armed with a camera. O’Brien’s
unfurling from the ground up, as it is an imposed containment, or attempt to capture the
essence of this land and place. The place and its ever-unfurling story, in other words,
does just as much of the “capturing,” not just the other way around alone.
comprehend the full depth of O’Brien’s stories in this way, many could not help, of
course, feeling it. When a reviewer of the 1877 OSA exhibition encountered O’Brien’s
The Whirlpool at the Chats, some of the expected European landscape technicalities
were missing: “We could stand a little more colour in the distance.” But there was
backwater of the pool is the best part of the picture.”282 Just like the fishermen in the
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painting, disrupted from their fishing in order to safely navigate around the swirling
current line of the whirlpool, the reviewer was “grabbed” by and within its circulating
backwater. This enigmatic earth narrative is what made all the difference to the
In the 1880s, O’Brien was appointed president of the RCA, befriended the
Marquis of Lorne and Princess Louise, and committed himself to the Picturesque
Canada project. These are life experiences that have daubed his art with Victorian
ideologies in our mainstream story of art. Even then, however, the ecological order
ruptured the seemingly fluid transmission of Victorian ideology that many commentators
suggest. The two O’Brien paintings standing guard at the entrance of this decade are
his Québec from Point Levis (1881), and View from the King’s Bastion, Québec (1881).
While these paintings seem to emphasize the dominance of a social narrative against a
largely inert or debased earth narrative, they were, quite significantly, also paintings that
were commissioned by Lorne himself. The latter especially, which emphasizes social
narrative perhaps the most out of any of O’Brien’s paintings, was directly modelled after
an earlier drawing by Princess Louise of the exact same view over the St. Lawrence. As
Reid himself admits, these views are very likely not O’Brien’s own, but ones he “was
asked to take.”283 What is striking in these paintings, then, are the subtle differences
between the original views and the ones performed by O’Brien after being infused as
well with his story; a bit of his place-based “true poetry of art.”
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In the princess’s original drawing of 1879 (Fig. 7), the ramparts of the citadel are
almost pushed entirely out of the picture on the left. It seems they are only showing
enough to emphasize the royal standard towering in the corner. The engraver of the
drawing later emphasized the standard even further by making it the only item in the
picture stretching outside and over the border containing everything else. With such a
composition, the viewer, like a completely disembodied eye, is left to float in mid-air,
hovering above everything in the picture except the royal standard. His gaze is
conventionally guided linearly, easily, and imperiously over, through, and out of the
landscape along the line comprising the rampart wall, the pointed finger of the guard at
its tip, and the ships lined down the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
O’Brien ruptures this linearity and imperious gaze, even while partly including it
(Fig. 8). He adds another hard-edged rampart wall with a canon running perpendicular
to the viewer’s gaze, like a barrier, along the bottom of the painting. This gives the
viewer an actual ground to stand on, and therefore a body in the world as well. O’Brien
also partially obscures Louise’s completely unimpeded view down the river by jutting the
rampart walls on the left further into the picture plane, and scattering all the boats in the
as the water they are wholly contingent on. O’Brien presumably had to paint this
hierarchical view, but he subtly infused it with as much of an earth narrative as he could
by over-exaggerating the original social narrative to the point of it being, or feeling like,
an awkward and jarring intrusion instead of a smooth imperialistic order. O’Brien’s own
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only from the easy flight over and through the landscape as in Louise’s view, but from
being able to move freely anywhere.284 This embodied feeling in the painting is echoed
by a reviewer in The Globe through his repetitive use of descriptors like: “boldly,”
the technical detail and realism in the painting, of course, but on the other, he is also
disclosing a significant experiential truth unfurling from the story. Even if not exactly
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w a s c e r t a i n l y perceived, felt, a n d
FIG. 8. Lucius O’Brien, View from the King’s Bastion, (c.1880). While this may be true, it is also
Québec, 1881. Oil on canvas, 91.6 x 61.0 cm. Royal
Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II true that the ways in which O’Brien shifts
2014.
Bierstadt’s view, and makes it his own
foregrounds its earth narrative. Bierstadt’s Citadel is a close-up of the citadel sitting high
atop Cap Diamant in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. There are a few boats
floating gently on the still river in between the Cape and the viewer, but the viewer’s
gaze is compositionally guided past them, through the intimate landscape over the
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water, and up the Cape to the Citadel. The gazing line is primarily established by the
sail of a boat in the centre mid-ground and its elongated reflection in the water.
Together, these gesture towards the viewer, and usher one directly up to the citadel,
mirroring the angle of the pole upon which flies the royal standard.
O’Brien’s Point Levis (Fig. 9), includes the same view of the Cape and citadel,
but pushes it way back into the background so that the entire Cap Diamant itself is
visible, and thereby completely dwarfs the citadel, as well as the city, Lower Town, and
harbour around its base. As a result, the strength in the painting emanates from the
Cape and its earth narrative, not from the citadel, boats, or city. Some of the city is
present in Bierstadt’s view as well, but it is largely obscured by the shadows engulfing it
amidst the dark, receding mass of the Cape behind it. This serves even more to
emphasize the brighter citadel atop it all, and reinforce the linear pull of the viewer over,
FIG. 9. Lucius O’Brien, Québec from Point Levis, 1881. Oil on canvas, 56.1 x 112.0
cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.
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through, and up the landscape towards it. By O’Brien pushing the citadel and city so far
O’Brien’s citadel, city, and social narrative are opened up to and breathing again within
the earth narrative encompassing and exceeding them. The viewer’s gaze towards the
citadel, furthermore, is distracted from its linear path. This is initiated by the sailboat at
the wharf in the centre-left foreground, which grabs the viewer’s awareness and guides
it upward along its mast. This is similar to Bierstadt’s view, but O’Brien’s is not a
conventional upward pull towards the citadel. His mast pokes up above the Cape,
drawing the gaze right past the city and citadel, only to get interwoven in the circle of
swirling clouds in the sky above it all. Caught in the dynamic earth narrative embodied
by the clouds, the viewer is easily pulled back down again by the dark patch of smoke
and rays of sunlight on the right. The earth narrative playing out between the water,
Cape, wind, clouds, and sunlight encompasses the citadel, city, and bustling social
activity that is everywhere ordered by it, not the other way around.
This story is further echoed in a lengthy rave review the painting received after a
private viewing (including King’s Bastion), with selected guests in 1881. Throughout the
review, the reviewer’s awareness is everywhere taken up not by the city, or citadel, or
any of its social narratives at all, but rather its earth narrative. He describes the season
—“a warm autumn afternoon”; the river—its circulating smoothness, its faint stirrings, its
delicate rippling, and its dwelling within the shadows—everywhere exceeding the
“scattered” vessels within its larger story; the Cape—its colouring, deeply interwoven
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with the “purple haze that seems to float in every shadow on these bright warm days of
early autumn.” It goes on at length like this, eventually working around to the sky,
clouds, and stone, even recognizing that an ecological order pervades the painting in a
the most striking part of the whole scene...is a bright blaze of light that completely
envelops every object that lies in its path...but at the same time there is nothing
in it that would strike one as exaggerated, harsh, or unpleasing.286
The review, in short, is a long description of the earth narrative unfurling through
O’Brien’s story, only mentioning the city, or any hint of a social narrative at all, in a small
portion of two separate sentences. Reid reproduces the review almost in full,
acknowledging that the viewer was clearly moved by the painting’s “compelling physical
presence...that apparently was all the more attractive to the critic because it supported a
truthful impression of the place at a particular, special moment” (my emphasis).287 But
then he completely dismisses the reviewer’s experiential and embodied story, replacing
it almost entirely with his own intellectually-driven one as an art critic working squarely
This is not at all what the reviewer comes even close to mentioning in his review. This is
not at all how O’Brien’s story moved through and infused this viewer who hardly
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mentioned anything about the city at all. This is Reid, rather, projecting a Victorian
imperialism onto the reviewer’s words (and thereby the painting), from the top down.
The 1880s for O’Brien were in large part occupied by the Picturesque Canada
project, and his related involvement in William Cornelius Van Horne’s venture to “sell”
Canada after the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1885. O’Brien travelled
and sketched all around the country, from coast to coast, visiting and being enveloped
by many animate places, terrains, and ecosystems. Some kept him returning even more
than once. It is well-known that both projects embodied many Victorian nationalistic and
imperialistic threads or motivations. These are certainly part of the story of O’Brien’s art,
of course, for there was a side to him inculcated to think that, for example, when riding
the CPR train through Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies “the grandeur of the pass and
the forces of nature overcome and controlled by the hand of man, are fully realised.”289
But what art historians and critics have tended to undermined is the embodied
awareness that O’Brien also had. This kind of reciprocal participation in the world
necessarily kept his mind open to the possibility that the CPR constructions and
appropriations were also in some deeper and more enigmatic way, “designed by
nature,” and not so emphatically the actions of humans against inert and determinate
matter alone.290
One of O’Brien’s drawings for Picturesque Canada also later summoned up one
of his best-known oil paintings called Kakabeka Falls, Kamanistiquia River (Fig. 10). For
demonstrating O’Brien’s “fever” for country that, ever since Armstrong’s pioneering work
in the region, was “a symbol of the northwest’s limitless, untapped resources.”291 While I
certainly agree that the painting has an incredible power, maybe even one unrivalled in
exuding promise for “limitless, untapped resources.” This fails to account for O’Brien’s
own sensate experience with the falls itself. The power in Kakabeka Falls is also the
unfurling power of Kakabeka Falls—and the earth narrative being storied through it and
its place.
FIG. 10. Lucius O’Brien, Kakabeka Falls, Kamanistiquia River, 1882. Oil on canvas,
83.9 x 121.7 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
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The only two figures in the painting are fishermen, again, distracted from the act of
fishing, and so far away from the viewer that they blend in almost completely with the
rocks on the river’s edge at the base of the falls. Together, their animal bodies also start
to take on the form of the river gorge itself. They are becoming constituent parts of the
place the longer they are encompassed by it, just like the reviewer above who
experienced a feeling growing up within him the longer he spent with O’Brien’s
paintings. The leftmost figure is standing with his fishing rod in hand—the curvature of
his spine echoing the curvatures of the eroded rock wall, the skeleton of the gorge,
behind him. The rightmost figure is sitting on a boulder—the downward pull of his weight
echoing the downward pull of the water crashing down over the Precambrian bedrock
knickpoint. The diagonal angle formed between the figures’ offset heads and body
positions even mirrors the angle of the gorge wall on the left, as well as the leftmost
chute of Kakabeka Falls. The falls and its place are clearly acting on and working the
social narrative enveloped and exceeded by it. Furthermore, the viewer’s gaze is
similarly “held” within this place, not only by the waterfall, but by the entire earth
Almost every detail of the painting gestures to the viewer’s embodied gaze. The
details pull the gaze inward and downward towards the incredible compression building
at the bottom of the falls. The angled walls of the gorge funnel me inward and
downward towards it. The shield-shaped rock shelf at the knickpoint of the falls, and in
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the middle of the two chutes, points down into the heart of the churning water. The
curved angles of the rock layers in the foregrounded cliff up the righthand side of the
painting all gesture inward and downward. And the hard rock terrace marking the main
erosion line about a third of the way up the right side of the gorge similarly guides my
gaze into the churning waterfall. The latter is even consciously emphasized by O’Brien,
for its appearance in the original sketch for Picturesque Canada is somewhat
counteracted by the more commanding and harsh vertical bands of light and shade
along the gorge wall. The engraver of the drawing (c.1881) for the final publication,
chose to focus almost completely on the lighting alone, weakening the pull effect the
gorge wall had towards the waterfall by rendering the last strip of shade so dark that the
lateral erosion lines gesturing into the waterfall were almost not even visible anymore.
O’Brien rectified this in his final oil painting by de-emphasizing the lighting gradations on
the gorge wall, and re-emphasizing its lateral erosion lines. This is a telling adjustment,
for it de-emphasized the singular, more hierarchical command the waterfall alone had
over the entire scene in the engraved print, and re-balanced it out over all constituent
While the viewer’s gaze is continually guided inwards and downwards towards
the base of the waterfall, it is also rhythmically pulled back out at the same time by the
various, bright, and contrasting greens and reds in the vegetation hanging on to the
gorge walls. This vegetation is nourished by the incredible swirls of mist and moisture
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rising from the bottom of the churning waterfall, and which guide my gaze up the steep
bank on the left. At the top of the painting, the gaze is pulled back down again by the arc
of the tree tops, mirrored by the arc of the clouds in the sky, both gesturing towards the
knickpoint, only to tumble the gaze again over the edge and down into the heart of the
waterfall via its righthand chute. This starts the pulsating rhythm of the painting, and the
place, all over again. The life cycle of the water is echoed by my embodied engagement
with the painting. By holding the viewer within the painting in such a holistic, dynamic,
and circular way, O’Brien is performing through his art practice the balanced and
The full extent of how this challenges Victorian ideologies about the place’s
promise for limitless and untapped resources is thrown into relief by comparing
O’Brien’s Kakabeka Falls with some of those Reid associates it with by Armstrong. In
Armstrong’s Kakabeka Falls and Portage (Fig. 11), Armstrong’s waterfall and earth
narrative do not “hold” the viewer’s gaze, but are instead “conquered” by it. One’s
embodied gaze is ushered up, through, and out of the landscape alongside the Red
River Expedition, which portages around it. The social narrative is emphasized as well
in his Kakabeka Falls, 1856, Kaministikwia River, Ontario (1911), where, although the
canoeists at the base of the falls seem “held”, there is still a “way out,” up, over, and
through the landscape. The transcendent point of view looking down on to the falls that
the viewer has, as well as the presence of the people and trail at the top of the falls, and
the uninhibited view over the land past the falls towards the distant horizon line, all
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FIG. 11. William Armstrong, Kakabeka Falls and Portage, 1871. From Canadian
Illustrated News 4.15 (1871): 232-33. Courtesy Thunder Bay Historical Museum
Society.
emphasize the imperialistic promise Reid speaks of. None of this is present in O’Brien’s
Kakabeka Falls. There is no hint of the portage route at all, and the viewer’s gaze and
painting’s social narrative are not only “held,” but performed, or animated by the
enveloping earth narrative. This invites the viewer not past the falls to some ideological
promise elsewhere, but to linger here for a while, get to know it, and let its place-based
To return again to the Rocky Mountains, O’Brien also acknowledged that while
there was grandeur everywhere in the Rockies, the varying passes, seasons, peaks,
and meadows—with each their own “garb...of air and water, sunshine and shadow,
lights and colour, dazzling snow and brilliant flowers, hot baths and anthracite coal in
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boundless profusion”—had their particular personalities, moods, and stories that acted
on and worked the social narratives unfolding within them.292 While standing amidst the
paintings, O’Brien admitted to being physically “held,” and distracted from his own social
narrative of employment under Van Horne: “We have been unable to tear ourselves
away from these lovely mountains of the Selkirk range. All we have done in the way of
moving is to shift our camp three miles west.”293 Being within the terrain in person, for
O’Brien, was “grander by far than [he] had any anticipation of.”294 The voluminous
depth, capriciousness, and animate life of the earth narrative encompassing and
exceeding his animal body, was no longer flattened and halted by the flat surface of a
photograph, from which he had to work for Picturesque Canada, having never been to
the Rockies yet at that time. “At one moment,” said O’Brien:
the mountains seem quite close, masses of rich, strong, colour; then they will
appear far away, of the faintest pearly grey. At one time every line and form is
sharp and distinct; at another, the mountains melt and mix themselves up in the
clouds so that earth and sky are almost velvet.295
This is a similar push-pull, dynamic, and pulsating rhythm O’Brien storied through
Kakabeka Falls, or which the falls storied through him. As a result, his stories of The
Glacier of the Selkirks (1886), and Cloud-Capped Towers (1886), as Reid has pointed
naturalism.” This set his work apart from other contemporaries sent out by the CPR,
such as John A. Fraser, whose naturalism stayed much more within the conventional,
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work did not simply embody a truthfulness based on intellectual, geological, and
were derived ultimately from the...genius of Turner [and Ruskin]”—they were animated
by the living earth with which he was participant; from his actually being there.
are also complicit in his Rocky Mountain stories. For example, O’Brien’s place-based,
embodied relationship with the Rockies and other mountain ranges performed through
him a new manner and handling of paint, which set his Rocky Mountain work apart from
that of even the widely-reputed American landscape painter, Thomas Moran. Moran was
friend of Ruskin’s.297 Reid himself remarks on this new style and handling particular to
O’Brien’s work. He observes that it “does not reveal a sympathy for the camera image.”
In regard to O’Brien’s Mountain Lake (1886), it has a “visual ‘weight’”; its “trees are
related to one another in a...complex but harmonious way”; and its lines are
“orthogonal” and “concealed.” Regarding the narrative element of Through the Rocky
Mountains, a Pass on the Canadian Highway (1887), Reid states that although “add[ing]
“light refracting through the sediment-filled glacial stream”; the “tumble of sunlight
across the spill of broken rock”; the “varieties of rock” that are “delightfully complex”;
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and his “dwarf[ing] the train.”298 Reid’s descriptions reflect the kind of embodied
experience I have been discussing, but then he seems to undermine it. Even after
admitting the above, it is still O’Brien’s “developing Canadian nationalism” and “[firm
of O’Brien’s work.299 I suggest that it was more a reciprocal participation with the place-
based awareness of the animate terrain that acted on these abstract Victorian concepts
and styles also particular to O’Brien’s carnal immersion here, and less the other way
around.
threads of connection to, perhaps even an affirmation of, Victorian values. On the other
hand, it is also telling that it was this particular place along the “highway” that O’Brien
chose to paint the train. The train is moving east to west, back towards the viewer, up
the Kicking Horse Pass. At the time, this main-line railway climb was the steepest in
North America. For Reid, even while acknowledging that the social narrative and train in
the painting had been dwarfed amid its earth narrative, this still only works to “make the
achievement of the engines seem all the more remarkable.”300 This is one story.
Another, from a storied approach, reveals that such an appeal to a Victorian brand of
Mountains is one of the few paintings where O’Brien does depict a more safe, easy, and
linear line over, through, and out of the landscape for the viewer’s disembodied gaze. A
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viewer’s gaze can easily follow the path of the Kicking Horse River and valley itself,
through the painting and out. The gaze, however, is distracted from this flight not by an
element of the earth narrative, but the social narrative embodied by the train.
Bastion, the train works against the viewer’s gaze, blocks it. It sends one back towards
himself along the rail line, almost giving the viewer a chance to reset and try flowing
down with the river again, only to get stopped and pushed backwards by the train every
time. The sensate awkwardness of this particular kind of circularity is heightened by the
fact that the train and railway are working at cross-purposes to the earth narrative. They
move against the trajectory of the viewer’s gaze, which, in this case, wants to flow more
easily down and along the curvature of space in the centre with the earth narrative.
Other painters, of course, painted trains in the mountains coming back towards the
viewer like this—such as in Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith’s Rocky Mountain Scene (1898),
or Mower Martin’s Train in the Mountains (n.d.)—but in these, the railway lines follow
the curvature of the valley floors making the path that the viewer’s gaze follows through
and out of the landscape unquestionably the same as that of the social narrative.
I would suggest that O’Brien’s animal body sensed that, while his mind could
abstracted from elsewhere, and not so in tune with the place-based awareness that
actually enveloped it. His painting reflects this embodied awareness. He also hinted at
the stirrings of this awkward and unsafe feeling arising from underneath in a letter to a
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friend back in Toronto. While it seemed to O’Brien that “every possible precaution [was]
taken,” and “that the risks [were] controlled and the line [was] practically safe” (my
emphasis), he could not shake “the stirring of the nerves” set off by the fact that “The
grade of the railway [was] extraordinarily steep, making the bare possibility of a runaway
awareness was in tune with a place once again. In subsequent years frequent train
accidents along this same section of the “Canadian highway” finally led to the
construction in 1909 of the Spiral Tunnels. The Tunnels, still in operation to this day, are
more of a “success” in the larger story already unfolding around them because they are
a social narrative working spirally, circularly; unfurling with the place-based awareness
of the terrain itself, and then through human brains and hands to help construct them,
The stories being shared through the life and work of O’Brien do invite (and have
been inviting), a movement beyond the dominant master narrative of art in Canada.
They have also been crucially complicit in it. Such openness to multiple understandings
is precisely a capacity that gives them back their life as breathing, shifting, stories
working on or through human lives in different ways. There were certainly reviewers in
O’Brien’s lifetime who did not single O’Brien out for any special treatment. The
Canadian Monthly in 1876 instead lumped him in with the rest of the OSA exhibitors that
year who largely only demonstrated a “woful [sic] lack of ideas” in Canadian art.302 The
capacity to not be finalized; to work in someone’s life one way, but then to shift and work
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in another’s some other way, even in a completely unpredictable one—as with the
power of O’Brien’s stories. O’Brien’s invitation to move beyond the dominant master
narrative, even while being complicit in it, is also indicative of the important capacity, in
Frank’s words, “to balance multiple truths.”303 This is made possible precisely because
O’Brien’s artworks already exist in part outside of, or prior to, the dominant narrative that
Canadian art historians have largely sustained. By being rooted and so performatively
emergent from here in this way, they are also fundamentally participant in a much larger
story than the disciplinary boundary lines rooted elsewhere are equipped to grasp
alone.
What the above dialogue with O’Brien’s art begins to remind us is that all human beings
have an indigenous soul. As Tsleil-Waututh Chief Leonard George has pointed out, “We
ourselves, separate from the body, that is linked and floats up to be with a transcendent
God when we die. Rather, I refer to something more like that described by
know the least...that holds our individual mysteries,” continually and integrally pushes
and pulls in/on our bodies, and whose “essential element and primary setting” is the
“although the journey is a spiritual one [in that it is intricately interwoven with the
upward toward the light…[but] a journey downward into the dark.”306 This is the
embodied core of human nature that is not concerned with saving the world, but “to fully
belong to it.”307 Our souls and the animate earth are not just dependent on each other,
but “long for each other” because, in the end, they are “of the same substance.”308 Of
course, the story unfurling through the terrain is performed differently according to the
particular carnal immersions of peoples (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) within it. But just
as all good stories persist and take on a life of their own from person to person—like the
This indigenous dimension of all people has also been appealed to by cross-
nurturing conversations with [their] relations.”310 This is also what respected Cree Elder
and healer Rose Auger appears to have told Dianne Meili about in 1989. Auger
remarked that when Europeans first came to this part of the world, “They lost the most
connection, a main thrust of Auger’s life work was (as it is still for many other Elders), to
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help these people “‘relate to what’s around us—be it a tree, a blade of grass, or clear
of the real here. His indigenous soul, his spirit connection, also necessarily perceives
and participates in the world from the ground up here. Abram, echoing many Aboriginal
scholars and commentators from over the years, demonstrates that this capacity is
“basic to the very constitution of the human creature, [and] necessary to our ongoing
vitality as a species.”312 No body, wherever it or its ancestors may have come from, is
ever completely severed from the breathing earth: it may be “Temporarily forgotten,
paved over yet never eradicated.”313 This is even true when in the heart of a city, as
illustrated, for example, by the “transponsive narratives” of Napi stories for many urban
Siksikaitsitapi living in Calgary and Lethbridge.314 Cities take on the energy, feel, and
storied life of their more-than-human places as well, according to the dispositions of our
carnal immersions in them, and in order to help enrich and perform our embodied lives
there too. We will see something more along these lines again when exploring some of
From a storied approach, O’Brien’s art is always already part and parcel of what
Alfred calls “an indigenously oriented dialogue aimed at moving beyond [past and
more fundamentally in line with the Indigenous ways of knowing of here, than with styles
more-than-human world, “men and women,” in Basso’s words, are always in the midst
of learning “to...think and act ‘with’ [landscapes] as well as about and upon them, and to
weave them...into the very foundations of social life.”316 Note that I am not suggesting
that O’Brien’s art is the same as Aboriginal art. Rather, it is always already gesturing
towards it, is always already oriented in its direction, because it too is necessarily
immersed within the same performative relationship unfurling from the ground up. From
within such interrelatedness, the terrain is never experienced as wholly inert or mute,
and can instead become storied: where a new world can be danced into existence on
the back of a turtle; where “whispered prayers [can be] offered on the breath to
capricious powers in the enfolding field”; where the surging world of peregrine falcons,
rock, wind, and water around Mt. Pinnacle can be painted into a new kind of dialogue
with displaced settlers; and where Episkenew’s “shared narrative of our collective
The cross-cultural issue within the mainstream story of art in Canada, as I see it,
then, is not whether or not, and how, Aboriginal art and voices should fit into it. Rather, it
is that the mainstream story can often make it seem like it is Aboriginal art that needs to
do the fitting at all, and not the other way around. It makes far more sense to
participatory and embodied selves, however, that the animate earth exceeding us—and
the ancestral voices, stories, and knowledge it has been performing here for millennia—
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takes up, shapes, and animates European styles, ideas, and practices that are always
already within it. This ground up, indigenous orientation is at the core of the story of art
In one instance demonstrating this, cultural historian George Melnyk has recently
noticed a kind of indigenously oriented shift in the progress of art on the prairies. He
calls this the “MÉTISIZATION of art.” This is a very tantalizing and exciting phrase,
compresses and simplifies the realities and histories of the Métis people, on one hand,
Canada for centuries, on the other. The process is characterized by Melnyk as one
where “the settler audience naturalizes itself by incorporating the indigenous worldview
into regional identity rather than relying simply on the agrarian myth.”318 While I can
concede that “something” like a métisization is occurring today, from a storied approach,
I suggest that it is also more than just a matter of “incorporating” the indigenous
worldview into a more mainstream one. This implies that it is primarily, if not always, still
Eurocentric story. I would suggest that Melnyk’s “métisization,” rather, is more the
deepening into one’s place—the deepening of abstracted European stories into the
ever-unfurling indigenous ones of here. When this occurs, abstracted parts begin to fall
away in their dispensability. They are like a candle in sunshine. An indigenous worldview
as it always has, through interwoven bones and flesh and veins and imaginations from
the ground up, especially if one is paying attention. And more and more people are
beginning to pay attention. For again, the animate earth is never not speaking to any
to suggest. It has been going on, unfolding, in flux ever since there were Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal people together in this place, whether the artists themselves knew it or
not (as we are now beginning to see with O’Brien’s art). It is this already unfurling
indigenously oriented story that animates and creates the conditions within which
Melnyk’s linear progression towards his “métisization” is possible in the first place. It is
already waiting here to have life breathed into it by our artist-storytellers (Aboriginal and
oriented, narrative in some important ways. It is what enables O’Brien to experience and
bring forth through his performative art practice (even if only temporarily or
subconsciously), that there is something a little off, or not quite in tune with the
experience of the St. Lawrence River as depicted by Princess Louise, for example, or
with Armstrong’s depiction of Kakabeka Falls, or with Van Horne’s new train track
through Kicking Horse Pass. In a sense, he is storyworking these stories through the
“new connections” are ones that involve European techniques and ideas—part of
O’Brien’s particular carnal immersion in places here—but are also beyond and
encompass them because his new connections are unfurling from within a completely
different sensuous and earthly imagination here. They require a more dialogical or
As we shall see, Indigenous ways of knowing, then, can significantly deepen our
understanding of O’Brien’s art (as it can with all non-Aboriginal art in Canada). They
help allow it to breathe, here, so that his art need not be only and ever beholden to
abstracted and displaced European practices and ideologies alone. They can help it,
rather, to be also fully capable of speaking from within the larger story of here, our
shared narrative, and not just from outside or above it. This is why Anishinabe writer
and publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, can remark that Aboriginal voices and stories
“are not at the margins, but at the centre.” Because Aboriginal voices and stories “are of
the land and from the land,” she continues, they are “the land from which all other
[stories] in this place now known as Canada spring forth.”321 In short, any Eurocentric
thought, action, or story is nested within the larger indigenously oriented story that is
and always has been unfurling from the ground up here. To elaborate further on how
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this might help re-envision our mainstream story of O’Brien’s art, I will take a storied
approach for the remainder of this chapter to what is probably his most famous painting
☈⊕♁
Sunrise was O’Brien’s diploma painting upon his election to the RCA, the same year he
was nominated to be its first president. When criticism on O’Brien’s art attempts to
encapsulate his entire life, actions, values, ideas, and work with one painting, this is
usually the painting chosen. The first major discussion around it was Reid’s in “Our Own
Country Canada” (1979). This set the template for most Sunrise discussions to follow.
Between it, Lefolii’s text in Great Canadian Painting (1966), and Harper’s short
discussion of O’Brien in Painting in Canada (1967), Sunrise also helped set the
template for the story of O’Brien’s art in Canada more generally. For Harper, Sunrise
combined “dramatic light effects with romantic grandiose cliffs,” echoing the German
style of Bierstadt, and the “glow of divine approval shining on the British Empire.”322
Lefolii echoes the same top-down story by emphasizing O’Brien’s engineering and
architectural background. In this vein, Sunrise was “as if [O’Brien] were compiling a
because “under the misty oils...is a surveyor’s plan of the bay and the bluffs” done by an
“engineer’s mind guiding a painter’s hand and eye.”323 Again, a similar story persists in
Reid’s account. Here, Sunrise “perfectly established” O’Brien’s own philosophy in life,
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FIG. 12. Lucius O’Brien, Sunrise on the Saguenay, Cape Trinity, 1880. Oil on canvas,
90.0 x 127.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Progress, Improvement and Expansion.” It also helped establish the role of landscape
artists in the fulfillment of Canada’s future, which promised “greatness, strength, wealth
and...even empire.”324
has clearly been a good one for the main storytellers of art in Canada. There is also
more to the story for lives in Canada. O’Brien was not only immersed in Eurocentric
engineering or art practices and education, but was also a human being in a more-than-
human world. For example, while his “engineer’s mind” may indeed encounter Cape
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Trinity in part with “a surveyor’s plan,” O’Brien was not just a disembodied mind. To his
embodied indigenous soul, Cape Trinity was always already gesturing towards and
provoking what Tewa scholar and educator Gregory Cajete recognizes as an integral
orientation and alignment of self to the environment with the material used.”325 This
European ideologies alone, for it is also nested in a louder, living nest of stories
One such story is called “Coyote’s Eyes.” It is retold by Archibald and concerns
the trickster figure Coyote, who, after a bunch of mischief, has to learn to stagger about
the world for a while with mismatched eyes: one small mouse eye, and one large buffalo
eye. The story reminds Archibald of the necessity to learn when and how to choose to
“‘switch back and forth between the eyes of not only Mouse and Buffalo, but...all the
other animals.’” It gestures towards the idea that aliveness in Canada is dependent on
need to be acknowledged equally for balance and harmony to exist. Doing so can
through societies (or art histories).326 O’Brien’s viewers, not coincidentally, are
performatively invited to make a similar choice. They can choose, in Pinnacle Rock for
example, to resist the halted action of its social narrative, and attempt to continue
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gazing Eurocentrically through and over Baldwin Pond towards the Eastern Townships
and beyond. Or they can stay for a while, feel on all fours, pay attention, and begin
opening up to the capricious earth and its enigmatic depths here. Although it is an open-
ended choice, the great drive to wholeness experientially gesturing towards viewers is
necessarily the larger indigenously oriented one of the buffalo eye performatively
Canadian art historians have often implied that they feel involved in such a
choice when encountering O’Brien’s art, even if it could not be articulated as such.
Albert H. Robson, for example, picked up early on the fact that there is something
particular and crucial that being native-born does seem to bring to O’Brien’s work. He
then chooses, however, to undermine this by associating O’Brien’s art primarily with
dominant British standards, which explains, for him, O’Brien’s penchant for “too much
detail.”327 Similarly, O’Brien has been recognized as a key link in Canada’s major
contribution to art history because of his “idea that self is necessarily located in its
relationship to place.” But then, in many subsequent breaths, this recognition has been
practices. The impression left by such recourse to influences like European art
movements, Bierstadt, Lorne, and Ruskin is that O’Brien’s artwork might have very little
affinity with place here at all.328 In another example, Reid notices that there may be
more than the conventional British ideologies of romanticism and imperialism to the link
between O’Brien and Bierstadt. But he immediately chooses to undermine that insight
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seventies, but it is a response to them nonetheless,” which “gives the proper imperial
It is not that the above ideas are incompatible. Both a relationship to place, and
European ideas are participants in O’Brien’s art. Moreover, a relationship to place is, of
course, part and parcel of life in Europe and of many Victorian ideologies. What I am
suggesting is that the emphasis is still usually on the European ideas and practices, as
though they are the primary source for O’Brien’s interest in the relationship to place to
begin with, or an absolute, unchanging filter through which he experiences it. It is this
Eurocentricity that I take issue with, not the European ideas or their complicity in
Canadian art. I am merely trying to rebalance the sites of power, and remind us that
breathe, but then chooses silence by leaving his own question unanswered. While he
acknowledges that the painting “does seem to have been influenced by the epic
landscapes of Albert Bierstadt,” why, then, he wonders, did O’Brien “not indulge in the
epic visions of the American West,” upon which Bierstadt’s whole reputation was based,
when he himself was in the Rockies and Canadian West just a few years later?330 From
a storied approach, this may be because Sunrise and O’Brien’s other artworks are not
just the way they are because of Bierstadt, romanticism, or Victorian imperialism. His
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artworks are also storied articulations unfurling in reciprocal participation with places
here through O’Brien’s particular carnal immersion in them. Many art historians have
seemed to glimpse another side to O’Brien’s stories than that which they themselves
continually tell and re-tell, but they have seldom followed this through, merely looking
Acknowledging both eyes within the storywork of Sunrise itself is telling. Art
historian Ellen L. Ramsay has argued that O’Brien’s painting “must be seen...as an
indelibly romantic interpretation of the sights and activities of the Saguenay region.” For
her, this is because O’Brien specifically chose to paint the scene “at its most
resplendent before the rising mist of the morning sun,” and completely omitted any hint
of the burgeoning tourism industry, the dredging operations along the river, the logging,
and the forest fires that were all occurring in the region at the time of his sketching trip
there.331 McKay mounts a similar argument, but subsumes Sunrise into a larger
stems back to 800 BCE and Homer.332 But in 1882, O’Brien himself re-designed Sunrise
for inclusion in Picturesque Canada, and also chose to de-emphasize many of the
romantic elements Ramsay argues were so important to him. He omitted the birds
floating tranquilly above the water behind the most foregrounded boat; he omitted the
mist and cloud enshrouding the top of the Cape; he omitted the recreational boaters
paddling out into the bay; he replaced the log on the beach in the immediate foreground
with more rocks; he increased the size of the shrub in the bottom right corner, extending
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it upward in front of the entire strip of river; he increased the curvature of the clouds in
the sky; and he increased the size and detail in the hills on the other side of the river,
bringing the background forward in the picture plane. All these changes compress the
vertical and linear distance through the painting, and increase the visual circularity
within it. This facilitates the “holding” of viewers in the encompassing earth narrative
Ramsay suggests that some of these changes—the omission of the birds, mist,
medium.333 There are many other engravings throughout Picturesque Canada, however,
with misty or cloudy parts reproduced from paintings with great skill.334 Furthermore, the
small, light-coloured birds against the darker background of the water in the original
painting would have been possible to reproduce in the wood engraving, for they would
merely have required cutting away from what would have been the raised section of
water in the woodblock. Finally, to say the boat with the recreational paddlers could not
have been reproduced in the wood engraving medium is similarly suspicious, for there
are already many other boats in the same engraving, one of which was even of similar
Ramsay also implies that the changes amplify O’Brien’s “mental re-mapping of
change.”335 But as we have seen, O’Brien was far from influenced by abstracted
European ideologies alone, whether through parents, friends, art teachers, or other
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artists. His embodied indigenous soul also lives outside of any ideological romantic
yearning. Ramsay has also noticed that O’Brien does uniquely structure Sunrise
circularly, with “[artifices that serve] to locate the eye centrally within the composition
and within the picture plane.” Again, this is merely indicative, for her, of a romantic
yearning inherent in O’Brien’s romantic mind. While the painting’s internal circularity
“offers a reflection on art and landscape,” Ramsay primarily ascribes this to a balancing
“between...the picturesque and the sublime for pictorial effect.”336 But O’Brien also had
a body in the world, with an indigenous soul interwoven within the ongoing emergence
of the real here. His art also exists in part outside Eurocentric artistic concepts and
To human beings with indigenous and embodied souls here, this is not romantic. This is
practical common sense, even obvious. This is part of the Anishinabe way of
way of fully “living the knowledge of the alliances.”338 O’Brien’s changes between his
embeddedness within, the unfolding indigenously oriented story animating it here. The
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through O’Brien’s carnal immersion in the world and art practice here. Such an
ideologies and practices in this place, but it does so primarily by challenging and
yearnings. These ideologies and practices are never completely the same as they were
and would have occurred in a strictly European context. Viewers, including art
historians, have a choice and are, in turn, animated according to their own carnal
immersions with/in the story. Yet this capacity for engendering diverse art experiences
oriented story unfurling through the living diversity of social-ecological life here.
unfold in more conscious manifestations within his own life. The process is like a series
of small decolonizing movements ever-unfurling from the ground up here. This diverse
place, in other words, begins to speak in O’Brien’s life through his tellings of it, thereby
conflicts in the world. In May of 1879, around the time that O’Brien was probably asked
by Lorne to serve as president of the RCA, O’Brien published an article in the Canadian
Monthly called “Art Education—A Plea for the Artizan.” As the title suggests, it is very
tempting to associate this article directly with Victorian and, more specifically, Ruskinian
ideas and practices. The article immediately follows the period in O’Brien’s art and
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career that Reid directly connects with Ruskin. As Reid points out, “It is very likely that
O’Brien read Ruskin...Almost everyone did.” Reid also suggests that O’Brien’s
(1857).”339 Ruskin advocated a “back to nature” approach, as well as many shifts in art
education and practice that would have important effects on British society, and in turn,
on Canada too. But it is precisely because of the parallels between O’Brien’s and
Ruskin’s thought, and the strong influence that Ruskin had on the Canadian artworld at
the time, that it is so telling that O’Brien did not explicitly refer, even once, to Ruskin or
his ideas in his article. Rather, the theoretical ground from which O’Brien draws for
The child of the red Indian is better educated for his future life than our children
are for theirs. Every sense and faculty that he requires to use is trained and
cultivated to the utmost keenness...having learned to see things and to do things,
he is for his place perfectly educated. Can we not in some degree follow his
example?340
Although tinged with colonialist stereotypes in sections, the point is that O’Brien was
and students’ abilities to belong and contribute to their world responsibly and efficiently
helpful, may not have felt as immediately relevant to O’Brien because Ruskin’s ideas
here are also encompassed by the unfolding indigenously oriented story of here.
Ruskin, for O’Brien, may have seemed like a candle in sunshine. O’Brien primarily wrote
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the article to take issue with what he saw as the ignorant stance of the mainstream
educational system with regard to art. He felt that art and its potential performative
power as a tool for teaching and education was being negligently undervalued. In
writing are of literary education, and it is the only universal language. To draw anything
we must study it with a purpose and thus come to know the thing itself—reading only
tells us something about it.” Too many students graduating from the mainstream
system, O’Brien continues, are too much like disembodied brains and “think they can
use their heads rather than their hands.”341 Conversely, O’Brien felt that the approach to
education taken by the Indigenous peoples around him embodied an inherent strength
His concern, not surprisingly, echoes Archibald’s when discussing her communal
of her point:
Through his own performative practice of art rooted here, O’Brien has similarly come to
the awareness that merely being inculcated about things in the world through books is
far less effective than coming to know something’s “full meaning,” or “the thing itself.” It
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seems to me that for O’Brien the full meaning and value of art in society was being
“Practical education” is an embodied one of the “hands,” not just the “heads.” It occurs
settlements, and in the lakelands, prairies, tundras, mountains, coastlines, and forests
always encompassing and animating them. For O’Brien, only by paying attention to and
—can students learn to belong here, then share it fully, responsibly, respectfully, and
In his article, he does not take Indigenous knowledge out of its context, never
claims it as his own, nor encourages a rush for outsiders to access, exploit, and control
it. Rather, he engages in what Mi’kmaq scholar and educator Marie Battiste, with
[Eurocentric] frameworks…[on] the path to a shared and sustainable future for all
peoples.”343 He gestures toward a doorway through which, not just Ruskin, but
oriented one that “seeks to include [a student’s] vitality or spirt,” as opposed to just “new
knowing.” It is also holistic, and “requires a personal relationship between the knower
and the knowledge,” bringing “us all into a living dialogical relationship with the world
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that our knowledge gives us.”345 Moreover, in Cajete’s words, “what is required [for
education and life] is a cultivated and practiced openness to the lessons that the world
has to teach,” not just those that books have to teach, or that other people command
you to know. It seems like O’Brien would agree. And this is what Cajete refers to as “the
In hindsight, we are now aware that following the date of O’Brien’s article, of
advocated for was exactly what did not happen. In fact, the opposite occurred. As is well
known, Aboriginal children, rather than being an “example” to everyone else here, were
taken from their families, forced into residential schools, and forced to learn in a
today.347 Just as this was and is a choice, so too is a similar choice inherent within
O’Brien’s art because it is also more than Victorian ideologies alone. Through O’Brien’s
performative art practice, Sunrise, like Indigenous art and stories, also carries part of
“the mysteries of our ecologies and their diversity.”348 It can also invite viewers to
practice quietness, “to listen,” and “learn the full meaning” of what you say and do with
the Saguenay, instead of just mine, log, exploit, and take from it.
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CHAPTER FIVE:
One of the most important artists in my life has without a doubt been the British poet,
painter, and printmaker William Blake. For the past almost twenty years, Blake and his
art have been a close friend, a companion, and a wellspring of imagination, inspiration,
and empowerment. His art was some of the first to “grab” me. I was drawn to it initially
revolutionary, and healing to me. Since then, his art has also become like the voice of
an Elder, in the deepest sense of the word, for western civilization. Like most people,
my first encounter with Blake’s work was with the decontextualized poetry of his Songs
of Innocence and of Experience (1789, 1794). That is to say, with the text alone, without
knowing anything about his particular way of printing the Songs, or that Blake also sang
them. I was especially stalked by his poems “The Human Abstract” (1794), “The
Fly” (1794), “London” (1794), and then also by his later “Auguries of Innocence” from
the Pickering Manuscript (c.1800-1807). Neither did I find out until much later that he
actually painted a lot more works of art than he wrote, even though to most people he
was largely a poet. I was especially mesmerized by his colour print The Ancient of Days
(1794), and his paintings The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
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(c.1803-05), Jacob’s Dream (c.1805), The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garment
Blake Studies—Blake and the Age of Revolutions was the program. I love how one
person put it a few years later: “wow, so you have a Masters in revolution!” At the time I
was moving, I was still unconvinced that Blake meant that much to me, even as I was
stepping on the plane to go. I just felt guided in a deeper, more inexplicable, soul-
centred kind of way. As my life experience story unfolded over the years with Blake and
his art, one of the directions his stories continually guided me was towards cultivating
the courage to recognize and share the gift I carry with the world. Blake, for me, is the
epitome of this journey, where his stories ultimately help envision and inspire a world
wherein I can do this; wherein I too can become the creative and expressive person—
the artist—I am in my own life and community. For me, the key to learning how to share
my gift with the world, has been to deepen in and fully belong to it. Blake’s art, not
coincidentally, helped breathe life into a personal kind of creation story for me,
moment in Western human history, a beloved creation story with so much darkness and
ambiguity. On one level, the artwork is a literal translation of the biblical passages in
Genesis where God created Adam in his own image “from the dust of the
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ground” (Genesis 2:7). On another level, Blake’s version of the story reveals something
a little more unsettling, which gestures towards a sensation that maybe this creation
story as we know it is not as abundant with goodness and light as we might think. God
hardly seems like an unlimited and all-powerful God here. Rather, he seems quite
oblivious to, even uncertain of, his actions. I am immediately drawn to God’s face. It is
brighter and more central than anything around it, but then I feel my body tighten, and
my breath slightly quicken with uncomfortable anticipation. For in his furrowed brow, and
open mouth and eyes—seemingly aghast with worry and terror—I do not feel secure, he
FIG. 13. William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, 1795/c.1805. Planographic colour
print with watercolour, pen, and ink. 43.1 x 53.6 cm. Tate Gallery, London.
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something else that I do not feel him present here at all. I immediately wonder why, for
I scan the rest of the painting for something else to converse with. I notice
Adam’s legs, wound with a giant worm, and my attention is pulled down the coil toward
Adam’s feet. I am momentarily excited by how they seem to emerge from and
interweave with the earth. Brilliant, I love it! But then, here too, I suddenly feel overtaken
with discomfort. The ground from which Adam is created seems more like a murky
morass of green goo. It is not the good dry ground with “yielding seed” and fruit trees
that God supposedly just finished creating in the story we are taught (Genesis 1:11-12).
My awareness enters into my own feet planted on the ground, and it feels comforting,
but Adam seems just as much pinned down in agony, as materializing out of the earth.
Within this very act of creation is also an immanent death and destruction. And it feels
like something other than just a natural death, which comes to us all and is within
everything anyway. This is a forcefully imposed one. Now I notice that the worm around
Adam’s legs and this transcendent God he mirrors seem more to bind him in a stasis,
like a crucifixion. They’re not really creating him, or helping him to emerge fully into the
world at all. No wonder there is no security or sustainable love present here. Within
such imposed stasis there is nothing that either God or Adam can do now but reflect
each other’s slow death. And the clouds descend to extinguish the inconsequential sun;
My awareness is shocked back into my own body, which feels both heavy and
bound like Adam’s, yet at the same time capable of flight and possibility like God’s.
There are no two separate entities, a spiritual and a material, at all! But, yes, this is what
I feel coerced, inculcated, pinned down into believing. How silly this all must look from
the outside, for this must be exactly what we look like, and what our world looks like—
our agony, our fear, our homogenous and placeless void—whenever our main hope and
salvation rests in elements ever conceived as outside or above us, or from a purely
human provenance. I can’t help but feel that one’s life is significantly restricted when all
written words ruptured from the animate diversity that originally provoked them. I believe
that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to get clear on what the gift is that you
carry for the world (let alone come to share it responsibly and respectfully), when one is
And just like that I feel my spirits start to lift. My chest warms, and I feel my
muscles pulsating with movement once again. I realize now how Blake, like a Trickster,
has mischievously held up a mirror to my own wholeness. I feel like I may better attend
now to any inharmonious imbalance therein, perhaps even recognize precisely how
much this story in front of me is partly me, but not my own. I am suddenly inspired by
the possibility inherent in such a metamorphosis, or descent, like this one initiated by
Blake to begin with. It is like an invitation to step into a new story, or rather, reawaken to
the larger one I am always already participant in, if paying attention. For I step outside
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and the world is not a morass of homogenous green goo encompassing me. If I am
paying attention, I am not pinned down within a lonely human and material individuality,
but also feel the tree touching me as I touch it. I feel something beyond myself, yet part
of me at the same time, invigorating my nerves and imagination every time I inhale, and
Blake’s art has guided me toward many deep questions (and is still doing so
today). I began to acknowledge and appreciate his work for this reason, but there also
came a point where I never could completely grasp a truth I was hearing in it. Namely, I
always found it a bit inaccurate according to my own experience that the place where
healthy, living spirituality, earth, and human creativity usually meet and balance out in
Blake’s work seemed to be “Englands green & pleasant Land.”349 Yes, this was the land
that some of my ancestors were from, and I was glad to have met it, but what resonated
most with me while I was there was that they also left it behind. Right down into my very
bones and veins I was fully aware while in England that I did not belong there. That was
not my place. The gift I carry for the world was not going to easily emerge from there.
So where was it then? What was it? The search continued. I came back to Canada and,
without any plans at all, felt myself quickly deepening even further into Blake’s story as
it began to breathe and shape-shift within my life here. As so often happens with many
Métis and other Aboriginal people in Canada who were not fully raised in a traditional
way, I was especially struck this particular summer of my return by how all this came
An Elder and another good friend of ours—a real brother of mine—were visiting
for a family purification lodge ceremony and we capped the day off by sitting around the
fire together well into the evening. It was a beautiful day. We were even visited by a
herd of elk and a gentle rain in between rounds of the lodge ceremony. It felt nothing
short of an incredible gift—what a welcome home. As we were gathered around the fire
at night, my family and I were further surprised by getting an eagle feather passed on to
us in honour of our relationship and the work we were setting out to do through the
wilderness centre. The eagle feather came with a story. While sitting back in my home
like that, in ceremony with my family and Elders, and hearing the story that came to us
with the eagle feather, everything Blake had been summoning up for me became real,
or deepened into my own life here, maybe for the first time. I still carry that eagle feather
to this day, and it has made its way around numerous circles with its story since. I pass
the story on to others whenever I get the chance and if it gets beckoned to for help in
any way. I’ve since heard a couple different versions of the story, but this is the version
A long time ago, before the two-legged people came, all the animals heard
that the two-leggeds were about to arrive. The animals wanted to give them a
special gift to welcome them, so they gathered together in a large circle to talk
about it. They wanted to make sure it would be put to good use, and not get
wasted. The circle was formed and all animals were present. Creator asked if
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anyone had anything to say. Everyone leaned in to listen carefully and salmon
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for them. I’ll take it under the waters
of the great ocean, and can even carry it way up to the very ends of the great
rivers. I can get it above the powerful waterfalls, and can carry it so far away that
no two-legged will ever be able to follow me and find this gift before they’re ready
for it.”
Creator thought about it for a second, but then told salmon that these two-
leggeds were stronger and more resourceful than everyone may have thought:
“they will be able to build machines one day that will be able to get them to the
bottom of the oceans, even deeper than you can swim, salmon, and they’ll be
able to follow you even to the ends of the rivers, and maybe find this gift before
they’re ready.” The salmon swam back out of the circle, and the grizzly bear
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for the two-leggeds,” said grizzly
bear. “I’ll take it high up in to the mountain passes, and carry it with me into the
deepest and darkest of dens. No two-legged will ever be able to walk as far as I
can, nor dare to enter into my dens when I am there. The gift will be protected
Creator nodded that this was also a good idea, but again, had to say that:
“these two-leggeds will also be able to build machines one day that will be able to
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cut through the thickest of forests, and enable them to walk as high up into the
mountain passes as you can go, grizzly bear. They will also be able to follow you
in to the deepest and darkest dens with some of these machines, and they might
be able to find this gift before they are ready.” Grizzly bear went back out to the
circle, and all the animals could then hear the great buffalo trampling up into the
middle.
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for the two-leggeds,” said buffalo. “I’ll
take it way out into the plains, further than any two-legged can even see, and
carry it with me in our great herds that can rumble the earth and everything in our
way. No two-legged will ever be able to walk as far out as I can, nor keep up with
us on our journey. The gift will be protected until they are ready for it.”
Again, Creator agreed that buffalo was also a powerful relative, but then
had to say: “these two-leggeds are so resourceful that they will also be able to
build machines one day that will be able to make them roads way out in to the
prairies, even further away than you can go, buffalo. They’ll even be able to build
tall buildings and big cities in the middle of these far away places that will enable
them to live even where your herds can. They might be able to find this gift
before they are ready for it.” The buffalo trampled back out into the circle, and
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for the two-leggeds,” said bald
eagle. “I’ll take it way up into the sky, and higher even than the tallest mountain in
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the land. No two-legged will ever be able to follow me into the sky, nor be able to
find me in the highest of its peaks. The gift will be protected until they are ready
for it.”
Creator really liked this idea, but then had to point out: “these two-leggeds
will also be able to build machines one day that will enable them to fly, even
higher than you can go, eagle. They will be able to get way up into the sky, and
up into the highest peaks in the land. They might be able to find this gift before
they are ready for it.” The eagle flew back out of the circle. And now all the
animals were really stumped. If these powerful brothers and sisters could not
help, how could they possibly hope to protect this gift for the two-leggeds so it
Just then, everyone in the circle heard a small chirping sound: “Cheep,
cheeep, cheeeeeep, cheeeep.” Everyone looked around, but nobody could tell
where the sound was coming from. “Cheeeep, cheeep, cheeeeeep, cheeep,”
they all heard it again. Suddenly, everyone saw Creator look down towards the
ground and from out of the earth they saw grandmother mole scurry up onto
Creator’s foot. She ran up Creator’s leg, hopped up onto a shoulder, and
they saw Creator start to beam with a huge smile, and look out happily towards
“I think grandmother mole has just found our answer,” said Creator. The
animals were anxious with anticipation. Creator continued: “We’re going to bury
this gift, we’re going to bury this gift deep within their own hearts, so that only
when they truly have the courage to look within themselves, will they be ready to
In early versions of the mainstream story of art in Canada, all art seemed to be
welcomingly progressing towards the work of Tom Thomson (1877-1917), and the
Group of Seven (1920-1933).350 Although not without their critics, the Group were often
considered and heralded as the height of artistic achievement and possibility within the
aesthetic and nationalistic aims were embraced as praiseworthy or positive.351 This has
been the story about the Group’s art by commentators such as MacTavish, Fred
Housser, and William Colgate.352 It has continued to this day in updated formulations
through commentators such as Charles Hill, David Silcox, Ross King, and Ian
Dejardin.353 These stories are largely fuelled by a recognition that the Group’s aims
were not only possible, or achieved in some way, but should be celebrated—that “The
Group of Seven effectively taught Canadians how to ‘see’ their country; [that] their vision
of Canada is rooted deep [and proudly] in the Canadian psyche to this day.”354
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More recent versions have involved a more mixed assessment of their work,
ranging anywhere from the more traditional reverence, to a great deal of harsh criticism,
depending on the analyst. The Group’s aims have been increasingly denounced in
these stories as destructive or negative. This narrative extends the critical tradition of
Lyman, and the critics of the 1927 Exposition d’art canadien in Paris. Today, it often
comprises postcolonial critical stories such as those by Jonathan Bordo, Scott Watson,
Lynda Jessup, Leslie Dawn, and John O’Brian and Peter White.355 In these, the Group’s
aims were either not achieved because based on a false, exclusionary idea of
nationalism that is “not the ultimate signifier of Canadianness,” but “the well-worn
mascot of an ‘official culture’ that still locates itself...in a centralizing, nationalist identity
characteristic of Ontario regionalism.”356 Or, if the Group’s aims were achieved in some
way, their achievement is far from worth celebrating because ultimately and insidiously
damaging to “Canadians” and Canadian identity for their inherent racism, romanticism,
While both story lines have unfolded together from the beginning, and have often
acknowledged the presence of the other without necessarily drawing a strict dichotomy
or opposition between them, each frequently downplays the importance of the other.358
In this way, they each take their turns augmenting the body of criticism surrounding the
Group by primarily finding faults or points of emphasis in other critics’ stories first, and
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then demonstrating how this can be proven with recourse to the art after the fact. This
top-down body of criticism has amounted to what has been referred to as the
“ideological edifice that has been erected in [the Group’s] name.”359 Art historian Joyce
Zemans suggests (like Donald Buchanan had glimpsed before her), that as artists, the
Group themselves may not have approved of such an ideological edifice, and that it is
to Zemans by arguing that because the Group’s work, in meaning and representation,
“is so integral to how Canada is understood” today, “to evade it would, in itself, be
Thus we find ourselves embroiled by an impasse that manifests itself in the ever-
decontextualized story of art as regards Thomson and the Group. Perhaps more than
any other artist in Canada, these artists have been subsumed by what art philosopher
Denis Dutton, and narratologist Brian Boyd, have referred to as the deadening hermetic
discourse pervading the humanities for at least four decades now.362 The Group’s
stories, it seems to me, have largely become stifled, not able to breathe, or are
discredited and devalued for just doing some of the things their art can do as stories:
shape-shift, perform, animate, and make life social, for better or worse. And even if
worse, this still ultimately shows us, in turn, where we are at with things, in order to help
In this vein, one of the most important things we can unlearn regarding the art of
Thomson and the Group is that the explanations provided by art historians (often even
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members of the Group themselves), are not The Truth, but rather manifestations of how
the story has synergistically storyworked, or unfurled within the life experience stories of
certain viewers, according to the proclivities of their particular carnal immersion in it.
Canadian isolated culture approach to art in Canada—in other words, are indeed part of
the truth. Contrary to what many postcolonial critical revisionists argue, the Group’s art
does do important social-ecological work within the country through the lives of some of
its viewers. This is partly why time and again so many revisionists have been
bewildered by the fact that their own explanations and methodologies have consistently
failed at, in White’s words, “sticking publicly.”363 And it is also true that revisionist,
postcolonial critical approaches to the Group are also part of the truth. Contrary to what
many traditionalists like to acknowledge, the Group’s art does also instigate racist,
genocidal, and social-ecologically exploitative work through the lives of some other
The Group’s art can do all of this work because, as we saw with O’Brien’s art, it is
partly within a Eurocentric story, and partly outside of it and complicit in an indigenously
oriented one. Furthermore, from a storied approach, the former is always already
nested within the larger latter one, and not the other way around, as is generally
Current stories about the Group’s art—both celebratory and revisionist—are stifled on
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their own because they share too many structural features with the power structures
they wish to oppose: English or European aesthetic styles and models, on one hand;
abstracted, Eurocentric assumptions about art and its creation, on the other,
respectively. I will explore these two points in the following section, but for now I suggest
that to begin understanding the Group’s stories in their fullness, both story lines are
necessary. And this understanding, moreover, can only deepen when it is also
complemented by Indigenous ways of knowing, which can help allow it “to be” from the
ground up here. In the final section on Thomson and the Group I will sink deeper into
my argument while storyworking with one of the most popular paintings in Canadian art
☈⊕♁
One of the most recent attempts at accounting for the Group’s art has been art
historians John O’Brian’s and Peter White’s Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven,
Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art (2007). Its postcolonial critical acuity and
penetration, based on its collection of foundational texts within the revisionist vein of
Canadian art history, is impressive. For reasons mentioned above, however, it still does
not do enough to contribute to a retelling of the story of art in Canada in a more cross-
culturally empowering way. This is borne out through two main issues, both of which are
sensuous, and dynamic interrelationship between animal bodies and the animate earth,
acknowledge and account for the dynamic interrelationship between animal bodies and
the animate earth, and the collection does include some Aboriginal voices who speak
from this place of awareness. But the inclusion of Aboriginal voices in the collection,
and Loretta Todd, any sense of the possibility for a profound, sensuous embeddedness
in the more-than-human places of here through art would be almost absent amidst the
ideological edifice emphasized by the majority of all other contributors. What makes this
even more curious is that the “myth of the wilderness” directly linked to the Group’s art,
and predicated on a fundamental separation between humans and the natural world, is
one of the primary targets of the volume. As a result, many of its contributions, while
being positioned to challenge or denounce the myth and its human-nature separation,
Second, the collection is based on the assumption that the Eurocentric “myth of
the wilderness” is, or perhaps should be, the most salient story to take away from the art
of Thomson and the Group. It is implied that humans who have felt or feel moved by the
Group’s art are likely being manipulated into a suspicious way of thinking about
Canada, Canadians, or Canadianism. As such, it is also implied that these people, then,
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would benefit from a more balanced education about the Group’s art and philosophy, in
order to guard against its possible racist, romantic, or exclusionary ideas of nationalism
and identity. While there is certainly a truth to the art’s complicity in social-ecological
devastation and the above “isms,” it is, nevertheless, a mistake, and equally
devastating, to suggest that “the myth of the wilderness” is the overarching story
echoing from the Group’s art. This wrongly imposes the Eurocentric art historian’s
thought and encounter with the Group’s art onto every viewer, devaluing the myriad
other ways the Group’s stories may take on a life of their own within the synergistic
relationship formed between storyteller, story, listener, and the context of the story
encounter. I will elaborate on these complex and related issues by weaving them into
The main thrust behind Beyond Wilderness was to, if not completely “dislodge,”
then at least mount a significant and coerced charge to help further weaken the
lingering romantic and nationalistic way of dealing with the landscape that has come to
be directly associated in Canada with Thomson and the Group through traditionalist
approaches to their art. O’Brian and White (as many others before them), refer to this as
the “fiction” or “myth of the wilderness.” The myth is denounced because it wrongly
assumes that the land is a separate realm outside of human existence, and therefore
Canada’s incredible social-ecological diversity.364 White draws from Dawn to point out
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that Thomson and the Group are a product of the tradition of European romantic
idealism, which understands landscape through this myth. In art historical terms, this
This tradition and myth is, no doubt, part of the story of the Group’s art, for, as
mentioned above, part of their project was indeed fuelled by this intellectual and
Eurocentric framework. Like O’Brien, however, they are also human beings with animal
bodies, and always within sensuous, dynamic, and living interrelationship with the land,
whatever malleable intellectual frameworks they may also carry. Because of this they
are also always encompassed, exceeded, and animated by the ever-unfurling place-
based story of the earth wherever they travelled and sketched. To be sure, I am not
suggesting that there is anything wrong with theories and intellectual things. On the
contrary, they are an integral part of life and being human. I am only taking issue with
art practice and encounters, at the expense of more embodied, emotional, and spiritual
ways of relating, and without full recognition for even the earth-based or embodied
ground of theory and thought in the first place. Whether Thomson and the Group were
animal bodies and the animate earth always also had agency within the their art as well.
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The Eurocentric “myth of the wilderness,” in other words, was indeed a story
animating the Group, as so many commentators in O’Brian and White’s collection speak
to. But this does not mean, as so many of those same commentators seem to suggest,
that members of the Group did not also have indigenous souls that were directly
experiencing the animate earth, the “power of the wilderness,” through the embodied
practice of art. It does not mean that they could not begin, even if it was only a small
and fleeting glimpse, to hear some of the land’s teachings (all human beings’ original
classroom). Nor does it mean they could not feel themselves getting woven into the
animate earth’s unfurling rhythms, and performatively giving breath to its larger story,
mind, and imagination. Furthermore, it does not mean they could not feel the earth’s
downward pull, which is so integral to all humans’ sense of belonging and life in a place
within the more-than-human world. And it does not mean that from this emergent sense
of belonging they could not begin to grasp a deeper sense of “home,” a sense of
community, even, perhaps, the tiny inkling of a sense of nationhood from the ground up.
The art of Thomson and the Group was in some very important ways, indeed,
“born from the land.”366 This is not romantic, but practical and inevitable for human
beings in a more-than-human world. When revisionist art historians tie the Group’s art
so completely to “the myth of the wilderness” alone, they are denying the Group their
participatory immersion in this ongoing emergence in the real—a necessary part of their
own vitality in a place. They are, paradoxically, not weakening the hold of the
Eurocentric “myth” at all, but rather subtly sustaining it, over and over again, in an
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abstracted ideological edifice that can only ever reinforce the notion that the human-
nature, body-soul, mind-body separateness that “the myth” ascribes to is possible in the
first place.
Landscape?,” O’Brian and White begin with the statement: “Environmental explanations
imperialism, and often racist, quasi-scientific theories.”367 This could be another way of
characterizing the “myth of the wilderness” negatively associated with the Group. It
demonstrating many of the ways the Group’s art has unfortunately incorporated the
myth for nationalistic purposes, but turned out, in actuality, to be racist, romantic, and
exclusionary. In the very same preface, however, now at the end of it, when introducing
Premises for Self Rule (1994), by Saulteaux artist Robert Houle, O’Brian and White do
not seem to realize the extent to which their own description of Houle’s work
undermines and exposes some of the truth concealed by their opening sentence.
According to O’Brian and White, the story Houle breathes life into is one about
the right of Native peoples to the land because his “peoples’ [or nation’s] shrinking
connection to [it] is at the heart of aboriginal history, spiritual meaning, and identity” (my
emphasis). But as such, and contrary to what O’Brian and White state earlier,
nineteenth-century European nationalism,” for they are also inherent in Saulteaux ways
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between animal bodies and the animate earth for all peoples, whether from Europe or
North America. The character and quality of this holistic relationship in turn shapes and
breathes life into any kind of explanation or understanding of it, of our nationalism, or of
our identity. The reciprocal participation of the animate earth and people in the ongoing
The same kind of concealment is echoed by the chapter’s opening essay, “The
Myth of the Land in Canadian Nationalism,” by historical geographer Cole Harris. Harris
begins by remarking how most people in the world, when characterizing their
this by demonstrating the illogical core of this anomaly with reference to the Group’s art.
nears its end with contributions including Watson’s linking of the Group entirely with
Housser’s “white supremacist tract” about them, the reproduction of Houle’s Premises,
and details from Jin-me Yoon’s A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996). But Harris’s premise,
while partly true, also unintentionally undermines and devalues the voices of numerous
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Aboriginal peoples in Canada who have not only linked themselves with “land and
location,” but also, inseparably, their cultures, their history, and their nations.369 To deny
life in a more-than-human world, is also to sustain the same colonial structure that
Aboriginal peoples and artists, such as Houle, have often attempted to rupture.
In the words of Seneca historian and activist John Mohawk, “The destruction of
the Native cultures and people is the same process that has destroyed and is
destroying life on this planet...the animals and the plant life.”370 Revisionist art historians
would almost certainly agree, but their language and methodologies address the
destruction of Native cultures, while frequently reinforcing at the same time the
destruction of animal and plant life by denying non-Aboriginal artists the possibility of an
embodied and emergent relationship within it. The colonizing process is on the surface
being challenged, but like the undisturbed depths of a windswept lake, can remain alive
As we saw McKay doing with the art of Légaré in my Introduction, so too have
between animal bodies and the animate earth, even while trying to defuse it. O’Brian
and White themselves, in their introduction, set out to establish the link between the
Group’s art and “the myth.” Coupled with their collected essays, this is meant to fuel the
challenge to the Group’s draw and popularity in Canada, which is viewed as based on
the existence of this link. The authors qualify their linkage, however, by stating that “the
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argument against “the myth,” and intention to weaken the lingering traditionalist
approaches to the Group’s art because of it, however, depends on, is even rooted in,
the same kind of separation they denounce. For example, to even begin positing a
separation of “the myth” from the animate earth, one is already operating under the
illusion that there is separation between mind and body, humans and nature. I find it
suspicious that O’Brian and White have to reinforce the very thing they hope to
This renders their project incomplete. If they are correct, and I believe they are—
that “the myth” is false, that humans and nature are not separate (and, therefore, it
Canada)—then “the myth of the wilderness” and “the wild unpredictability” of the
animate earth are, in fact, already profoundly related and connected in some way. The
existence of this connection is what falsifies and precludes the myth’s inherent
disconnection. To mention just one way this is so, the myth’s premise that humans are
separate from the animate earth is, as Abram has shown, directly linked to humans’
“wildness that nourishes and sustains us.” Furthermore, we are ever experiencing
can only perceive the world from our unique places in it, “each particular presence
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In short, “All our knowledge [even “the myth of the wilderness”]…is carnal
knowledge, born of the encounter between our flesh and the cacophonous landscape
we inhabit” in some way.374 It is the same kind of mistake to separate “the fiction of the
wilderness” from the “wild unpredictability” of the animate earth (even if only to counter
the myth), as it is to endorse the myth itself. If the only way O’Brian and White’s project
can stand is by keeping the “myth” separate from the wild and shifting animate earth,
their solution is really no solution at all. It can never really get to the heart of their own
As still a part of the colonial problem, then, mainstream stories about the Group’s
art largely sever the relationship between animal bodies and the animate earth. They
can often only reinforce one storyworking path instead of the multiplicity of paths that
stories, this manifests as a Eurocentric notion of nationalism rooted in the “myth of the
wilderness” that is universalizing, essentializing, and arrogant, even though there are
other options, as revisionists have been pointing out. In the revisionist stories, this
manifests as an overemphasis on the role and expression of the Eurocentric myth of the
concealed, or neglected in these mainstream stories is the way in which the Group’s art
might also challenge, rupture, and erode its Eurocentricity from the ground up by also
As such, the Eurocentric “myth of the wilderness” is one, though certainly not the only,
possible story echoing from the art of Thomson and the Group, whether in its
traditionalist or revisionist thread. The Group’s art can, does, and did breathe, or take on
a life of its own within the life experience stories of various viewers. To begin exploring
this unlearning further, Dawn’s National Visions, National Blindness (2006), will be
because this is not the same as the Group’s claims to an “indigenous” art in Canada,
“indigenous” when members of the Group or their supporters attempt to describe the
Group’s art. The latter largely places the emphasis on the objectified land alone, as
meaning the Group’s art is completely “of here,” and not of Europe in any way. In my
use of the phrase, however, the land and the ways its story unfurls through embodied
participation with it are component. Thus, I am not simply defending the traditionalist
approach to the Group’s art, nor trying to resurrect an old way of thinking about the land
that has been challenged for decades. On the contrary, acknowledging that the Group is
part of an indigenously oriented story ever-unfurling here is different than saying they
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oriented direction recognizes that colonial influence is happening, but not necessarily in
a dominant way. Rather, the colonial influence is in flux, being slowly eroded, ruptured,
and challenged—at times subtly, and at others not so subtly. It is, in other words, being
continually brought back down to the ground, so that inhabitants can also choose to
move out and around with the animate earth encompassing them in spirit, mind,
emotions, and body. Acknowledging the wild contingency always already going on
between human beings and the more-than-human world within our new story of art in
Canada in this way actually strengthens and enhances the cross-cultural potential
aspired to, but which is ever out of reach in conventional postcolonial critical
in the Group’s art is Dawn’s sophisticated National Visions, National Blindness (2006). It
counters the traditionalist story by demonstrating how the Group’s art is fundamentally
linked with British aesthetic principles and ideology, rather than the conventional
unmediated relationship with the land in Canada that the Group themselves claimed,
and traditionalist commentators took for granted. The core of his story is assembled in
his first few chapters, which were also condensed into an essay for Beyond Wilderness.
He demonstrates the extent to which the Group’s thoughts and words about their art—
their claims to its being indigenous to Canada, born from the land, autochthonic,
that can be traced back to the picturesque movement. The group, as I read Dawn, are
almost exactly repeating what British aestheticians were saying about British landscape
art a century or two earlier. The philosophy is merely being transplanted to a Canadian
context as now filtered through the brains of Thomson and the Group. This argument is
extended in his book to demonstrate how much the Group’s art, then, was actually born
from, and contributed to the sustenance of not Canada, but England and its imported
colonial attitudes and actions against Indigenous peoples. At the same time, however,
Dawn also demonstrates how the Group’s transplanted philosophy was able to claim
agendas. These were everywhere working to maintain “a carefully disguised, but artfully
imperial power,” which were largely informed by the universalized equation of landscape
with nation.376
undermining of experiencing bodies. For the Group’s art, of course, was not so entirely
and absolutely “British,” as Dawn seems to suggest. They were in participation with the
animate earth here. As I hope we have been relearning, the land is always active, has
agency, and so does make a huge difference—much more than many art historians
have acknowledged. Dawn’s story, then, fits squarely within the postcolonial critical
mould discussed above that attends very carefully and refreshingly to cultural issues,
but simultaneously and subtly undermines them because it does not also account
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adequately for the more-than-human setting always already underwriting them. This is
one reason why commentators like Tsimshian art historian Marcia Crosby can remain
unconvinced by and skeptical of Western self-critical works that seem only on the
On the other hand, what Dawn’s book does more effectively, even if only
unintentionally, than perhaps any other is persuasively demonstrate the extent to which
the art of Thomson and the Group is also part and parcel of a much larger indigenously
oriented story, and not the other way around. This is made evident by the fact that the
Group’s art needed to be manipulated over and over again by a few Eurocentrically
oriented and politically connected men for Westernized agendas. These men included,
namely, Eric Brown (contemporary Director of the NGC); Sir Edmund Walker (President
of the Bank of Commerce, and Director of the NGC board who hired Brown); Duncan
Barbeau. To this list one might also add the Group’s first biographer, Fred Housser. As
Reid and Robert Stacey have each observed in their own ways, the Group were often
“the unwitting chess-men” in the contests played out by these men.378 The story of the
Group’s art as we know it today, in other words, is largely the story as it played out
within the life experience stories of these few men, and not necessarily because this is
The Story of the Group’s art. Dawn’s book makes this abundantly clear throughout.
As we saw occurring with the exclusionary art in Chapter Two, the fact that the
Group’s art had to be appropriated over and over again with different tactics each time
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gestures more towards the extent to which the agendas it was being appropriated for
were clearly not the whole truth embodied by the art. This was not the art’s work in its
fullness. The Group’s art did not, apparently, fit so neatly into a purely Eurocentric
framework alone. When appropriated as such by the above men, it was continually
resisted and largely unsuccessful. As Dawn recognizes, “If anything, the quest for unity
provoked disunity.”379 Not only is this the case, however, because the above men’s
agendas alone were in competition, but because the Group’s art was also already
nested within an indigenously oriented story that threw the awkwardness of these men’s
From a storied approach, their stories did not entirely fit the places, nor peoples’
experiences within them, with which the art emerged. These Eurocentric stories, in turn,
facilitated the similarly awkward exclusions now associated with the Group’s art in some
life experience stories, such as, for example, the exclusion of Aboriginal art from the
collecting and exhibiting practices of the NGC, the Art Gallery of Toronto, the Banff
Centre for the Arts, and the Glenbow Museum.380 But these are only part of the story
unfurling through the Group’s art. It also animated inclusive and collaborative cross-
cultural partnerships that were simultaneously occurring from the ground up elsewhere
in Canada. To mention one example, the life and work of artist Mildred Valley Thornton
Thornton is not mentioned in Dawn’s book at all, but she poses a significant
challenge to the de facto association of the Group’s art with Eurocentric notions of
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painting portraits of Indigenous peoples as early as 1928. During this time the Group
was still together and they were in the midst of Dawn’s story linking their landscapes to
national unity via an erasure of Indigenous peoples from the land. Some examples of
Thornton’s work include Manitouwassis (Fig. 14), and Mary George, “Old Mary” (Fig.
15). Her portraits were done in a style reminiscent of what could be called a cross
between those of the Group and American artist W. Langdon Kihn. Her colours were
bold and vibrant, like Thomson’s, Arthur Lismer’s, or J.E.H. MacDonald’s. Her
brushwork and style were post-impressionistic, more fluid and deliberate, like that of
A.Y. Jackson or Franklin Carmichael. And her figural compositions were head and
shoulder close-ups, intense, and often with little background, like Fred Varley’s or
Kihn’s. This is notable for our purposes here for three main reasons.
First, Thomson was one of Thornton’s favourite painters. She reverently and
sketching grounds, and place of death), while pregnant with twins in 1926. She was also
student, and sketching partner—who also remained a lifelong friend of hers. Second,
when Thornton was not painting portraits of Indigenous peoples, she also painted
examples of these include her The Touchwood Hills (Fig. 16), and Across the Inlet (Fig.
17). Finally, her portraits depict Indigenous peoples, not in a sentimental, staged, or
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romanticized way, as in, for example, the earlier portraits of Paul Kane. Rather, her
sitters are painted (reminiscent of Kihn), in everyday life, intimate, with their own
personalities and physicality, often even facing viewers head-on (unlike even Kihn), like
equals. They are included in the modern world without diminishing their continuity with
cultural traditions, and have, what Dawn describes in Kihn’s portraits, a “contemporary
presence.”381 In Thornton’s own words, she painted “Indians wherever I found them, in
plan.”382
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FIG. 16. Mildred Valley Thornton, The Touchwood Hills, c.1930. Oil on canvas,
76.1 x 91.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of J.M.
Thornton, Vancouver, 1971.
contemporary presence, and the love of Thomson and unpopulated landscapes are
manifested through the “myth of the wilderness” and its linkage to national unity, is
subtle and complex act of colonization and imperialism. In the mainstream story, erasing
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FIG. 17. Mildred Valley Thornton, Across the Inlet, n.d. Oil on board, 24.8 x 32.4 cm.
Private collection.
Aboriginal voices, history, ways of knowing, and presence from the land completely (or,
if it is there in some way, relegating it to the past as a vanishing culture), was the only
way the Group’s art could claim any fundamental link to Canadian nationalism,
according to Dawn.383 And in the words of Watson, “The Canadian problem [directly
fanned and fuelled by the Group’s art] is an obliterated [Aboriginal] history throughout
It is for this reason that Dawn argues Kihn’s portraits of West Coast Indigenous
peoples were so policed and manipulated by the above-mentioned men, who, I would
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suggest, are in large part the real heart of Dawn’s book. Kihn’s paintings destabilized
the assumption of the disappearing Indian promulgated by Brown, Barbeau, and Scott,
and the convention of the “empty landscape” (underwritten by the “myth of the
wilderness”), upon which the former was dependent. This directly challenged Brown’s
Anglo-centric version of national unity, and hence the importance of the Group’s art to
his (and Scott’s), story of “Canada.” Kihn, according to Dawn, could only paint
Aboriginal peoples like he did because he was not Canadian, but American, and so was
able to become involved with supporters of Pueblo concerns in the American Southwest
—where the discourse of disappearance had already long been challenged—before first
coming to Canada. If he had come to Canada first, he could not have “seen” the West
Coast Indigenous peoples like he painted them because “Here, he would have
encountered a concept of the role of Native culture and art completely different from
that.” And he would do so largely because of the Group’s art and its colonialist role in
the stories of some politically powerful people.385 Thornton and her art, however,
demonstrate that this mainstream revisionist story about the Group’s art is clearly not
the whole story, but just one possibility that is not as pervasive as some suggest.
learned in southern Ontario—except for a brief time at Olivet College in Michigan. She
moved to Saskatchewan in her early twenties after completing studies with Beatty at the
Ontario College of Art.386 Although she returned to Ontario from time to time for various
trips and shorter stays, she primarily lived and worked between Saskatchewan and
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British Columbia for the rest of her life. Even distanced from Canada’s artistic and
political power centre in Ontario, she was, of course, still affected and influenced by the
colonialist ideologies spread by people like Brown, Scott, and Barbeau. But the distance
(geographical, and as a woman artist), perhaps, made it easier for her to live a life
evidencing the power also inherent in the Group’s art when it is actually allowed to
breathe on its own, from the ground up. As already mentioned, she was “grabbed” by
the art of Thomson, developed similar painting styles and interests to his under the
tutelage of one of his friends and peers, and at the same time was able to paint
prolific contemporary advocate for Aboriginal rights in Canada. The depth of her
involvement in this cross-cultural life from at least 1928 until her death, can be
Through the nineteen twenties and early thirties, Thornton became an important
member of the Saskatchewan branch of the Women’s Art Association, whose work and
exhibitions, as we saw in Chapter Two, were always meant to be more collaborative and
After moving to Vancouver, Thornton also frequently published in the Native Voice
newspaper (1946-1969), which was read throughout North America, and was the official
forum of the Native Brotherhood of BC—one of the country’s first advocates for First
Nations rights. Through connections made here, Thornton also became a member of
the Native Sisterhood. She also became involved with the Totem-Land Society, which
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was devoted to advocating for Aboriginal arts and citizenship, and helped set in motion
Kwakwaka’wakw carvers Mungo Martin and Ellen Neel. Thornton and Neel became
friends, and they collaborated on ideas and cross-cultural projects through which to
Throughout all of this work, Thornton regularly travelled throughout the Western
provinces painting her portraits, and her unpopulated landscapes as she went. Unlike
other portraitists in her time, she asked permission of her sitters first, and respectfully
compensated them—who, she admitted, taught her much about reciprocity along the
way—with gifts, including honoured cultural items such as tobacco and salmon. She
developed many cross-cultural friendships as well, and many First Nations people and
communities asked her to represent them in varying aesthetic and political capacities.
She wrote numerous articles, and toured around the Western provinces and Canada
spiritual rights, equal education opportunities, and improved living conditions.387 Some
associations; the Social Credit Women’s Auxiliary; the Vancouver Poetry Society; and
many historical and arts groups. Many of Thornton’s cross-cultural activities, and
especially her portraits, have also since helped spark various Indigenous resurgence
contributing to the recovery of oral traditions and history; and new educational programs
through all of this, Thornton loved the art of Tom Thomson and the Group.
collaboration, and Aboriginal rights and restitution. From a storied approach, Thornton’s
work within both spheres of unpopulated landscape art and intensely present
Indigenous portraiture and advocacy was not due to some awkward or incorrect linking
shifting, breathing stories of, especially, Thomson, within her own life experience story
from the ground up. Contrary to Dawn’s suggestion, the increase in production of
unpopulated landscape art by non-Aboriginal artists and the death of Aboriginal cultures
particular carnal immersions within that story, but they are not inextricably so. There is
more to the story. I have been attempting to demonstrate that there is even an
indigenous orientation to Thomson and the Group’s art that can also challenge, rupture,
and erode its Eurocentricity from the ground up here. In order to take this one step
further, let us now take a closer look at some of Thomson’s art in particular.
☈⊕♁
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One of the most widely recognized and reproduced paintings in Canada is Thomson’s
The West Wind (Fig. 18). It was probably painted in early 1917 after a sketch done in
Algonquin Park a few months earlier. It was adored by his peers—future members of
the Group of Seven—and its subject was subsequently taken up in paintings by Lismer,
Varley, Carmichael, and Casson. The two trees at the centre of the composition, despite
their thinness, perhaps even delicacy, firmly capture and hold the viewer’s attention with
a different kind of strength than a purely physical one. These trees usually get the share
of commentators’ attention not only for their centrality to The West Wind, but because
the image of the solitary tree at the centre of an unpopulated landscape also
subsequently became a well-known motif for the future Group. Seldom in the
commentary of the ideological edifice, even by the Group themselves, however, are the
trees ever allowed to also be trees. For commentators in the traditionalist vein, like
Lawren Harris and Lismer themselves, such landscapes embody “the spirit of a people,”
and are “a symbol of the character of Canadians.”390 For Housser, The West Wind’s
trees are “a harp” in “the same spirit of reverence as the religious paintings of the old
masters.”391 For Silcox, they have achieved “the status of a symbol,” and are similarly
whole country.”392
For those in the revisionist vein, they are also largely symbols, but with a “lengthy
FIG. 18. Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1917. Oil on canvas, 120.7 x 137.2 cm. Art
Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
become a sentient almost human presence.”393 In the words of art historian Jonathan
Bordo, they “open the way for an unfettered and direct line of projection between
pictorial subject and Subject [so that] an anthropomorphic transposition becomes almost
unarrestable.” This marks the image with “a palpable human absence and concealed
according to Bordo, that leads one to project the illusion that such trees are a person,
oneself, or symbols of the vitality of Canadian people, on one hand; and on the other,
leading to the erasure of Aboriginal vitality, presence, and ways of knowing from the
All of the above examples preclude the notion that the trees in The West Wind
are also trees, as those in the everyday lives of viewers and painters. Bordo posits that
presence” in the world, but they cannot be a fiction, and at the same time be very real
art history often deny such an embodied relationship with a painting—a story—just as it
the word “inanimate” above when describing trees).394 Indeed, when art historians work
“real.” But there is a significant difference between recognizing that the natural world is
human lives and art. The two denials above are profoundly related, for as we have seen
with the art of O’Brien, the painting is not just a representation of something outside a
praising the power of Thomson’s art because, “untrained as a painter,” “His master was
Nature”:
own intellectual philosophy (nationalism) onto the art in the end anyway. This only
served to make the trace of its European and colonialist influence that much more
exaggerated and central to the stories when viewed from within an equally intellectual
As such, revisionists have spent a considerable amount of time pointing out the
mistakes in Housser’s, and other traditionalists’, claims. For example, there is, indeed,
influenced by his European ancestry and socio-political milieu in Toronto. He may have
also been influenced in this way while on sketching trips with Jackson and Harris, the
latter with whom he traveled the same year The West Wind was sketched. There is
also, indeed, trace of aesthetic theory in his work, due to the visual similarity of his art to
landscape art. Finally, there is good reason to be skeptical of Housser’s claims about
Thomson’s intuitive technique and “pure ‘being’” in the woods because, according to
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many of these revisionists, it is assumed that nature itself does not speak to people—art
cannot be “born from the land” this way. Rather, Thomson’s art merely represents it, or
his own subjective experience with it, or can only respond to it through the mediation of
with the land, and his viewer’s embodied experience with his art, are almost everywhere
undermined and so his stories are largely stifled. In other words, “the scope and
and, therefore, included in the telling of the Group’s story or the story of art in
Canada.396
The West Wind is generally considered to be a painting that emerged from one of
Thomson’s trips to either Grand Lake, or Cedar Lake. He had also been working as a
fire ranger and guide in Algonquin Park at this time, and so had been practicing
Thomson fondly, if not with slight envy, as an artist who could “go with the stream” and
paint scenes almost effortlessly, while he and his peers would be “slaving to
who grew up among naturalists, and a skilled guide and woodsman—would, indeed,
have made it possible for him to intuitively awaken to and pre-conceptually “hear”
aspects of the land “speaking.” This would have animated him, and carnally immersed
him in the ongoing emergence of the real around Grand or Cedar Lake. Furthermore,
such continued immersion would have enabled him to performatively tap into these
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As a result, The West Wind also makes significant reality claims on viewers from
the ground up. The story of The West Wind is not just the story of the Canadian
character; Canadian nationalism; the erasure of human presence from the land and
thereby the visual cue for the creation of protocols governing conduct in Canada’s
National and Provincial Parks; or the erasure of Aboriginal presence from the land, and
thereby the nation, all from the top-down. These stories unfurl from it through the
storyworking process, but do not wholly and completely characterize it. It is also the
story of the west wind blowing across the lakes of the region, interacting with the trees
on the rugged rocky shores, the clouds in the sky, and the story they and the mosses,
lichens, and rains, all bring forth together in this place. Even though the painting was
entitled “The West Wind,” it is interesting to note that art historians have seldom
discussed the wind at all except to notice it in the background on the water or clouds.
With such a title, however, Thomson was foregrounding and sinking deeper into a
symbol. To emphasize only the latter undermines the necessary reality claims of
The holistic participation of wind has been generally forgotten in art historical
analyses of The West Wind. Instead, the trees as stationary objects, or as opposing
forces to “the furious...gale winds,” are emphasized. And when the latter, they are often
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“resolute nature”; their “struggling” like a “sacrificial soldier”; their reverential “poetry” in
something separate from the tree, that is to be resisted, or as a less valued participant
in the painting because of its ferocity and opposition to the esteemed tree. It is more
difficult, in other words, to learn from such art historical analyses the extent to which the
wind is also an equal and interrelated being in the unfurling story of life and a place.
From a storied approach, this kind of forgetting of the air, and emphasis on the
objectified trees, says more about the disciplinary boundary lines of art history than it
does about Thomson’s story. As Abram has pointed out, the forgetting of the air “is in
some sense the most profound expression of [the] oblivion” we inhabit, when
world.”399 The air is the most pervasive presence all entities of the world can
experience. It directly envelops us inside and out so fully that nobody can literally think,
speak, or do anything without its participation: it is the place we are all most intimately
in. It is also the most mysterious to our senses, for it is completely invisible: “The air, we
might say, is the soul of the visible landscape.”400 When painting it, one inevitably has to
bring into one’s awareness its myriad interrelationships, or alliances within the more-
than-human world for its aliveness to be storied at all. In Abram’s words, “As long as we
experience the invisible depths that surround us [I would add: including in our paintings]
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Indeed, art historians have been referring to the art of Thomson and the Group
as “empty space” for decades now. They assume that because there are no humans in
the scene non-Aboriginal Canadians, including the Group, must all have largely viewed
the land as “empty” and “there for the taking.” Through the performative practice of art,
while standing in the wind on the shores of Grand Lake or Cedar Lake, Thomson did not
forget about the air, however, for he painted an earth narrative with it at its mysterious
centre, but also, intuitively, at its margins. This is much more akin to O’Brien’s dynamic
and pulsating circularity, only now according to Thomson’s particular carnal immersion
within it.
turn, reminds us of its essential participation with everything it sidles up against: the
waters of the lake rise and shout as its fluidity rides and intermingles with the wind’s
own currents, hastening, slowing, and acting out the dynamism of the moment. The
clouds move with it, inhale and exhale it, multiplying and metamorphosing into one
another, and preparing to possibly spill rain upon the land and join in union with the
entities below. The rocks snag lichen spores from the wind and remind us with every
colour and texture just how much mere “existence” is already an upsurge. And the
bodies of the trees themselves bow with the wind in a dance where each organizes the
space around it, and together. I feel no tension in my body anywhere when
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encountering The West Wind, no opposing force here at all. Rather, a wild contingency
and commingling of bodies with other bodies, never in a homogenous or bland oneness,
but in a sensuous malleability that falls across my awareness. I feel more “a steady
trading” of one here with another there that is “articulated in various nodes and knots
Thomson put all of these reminders right in front of us, thereby helping to
“retrieve the sensuous world from the oblivion to which our concepts too often consign
it.”403 Then it took on a life of its own within various life experience stories according to
particular carnal immersions in it. Jackson felt that the red outline encircling the trees
burned like fire with life and energy, “satisfying and thrilling to the imagination.”404
Interestingly, he equated this red outline to the aliveness of Blake’s poetry in his Songs
of Experience. The energy and musicality sensed by Jackson was also pointed out
above in Silcox’s felt invitation towards a national anthem, and Housser’s to play the
harp. Housser also remarked at length on all parts of the painting, rather than just
The west wind blows directly in your face without any artistic obstructions; the
scent of pines and balsam and wet mosses; the spray of falling waters, the cold
effulgence of snow, or the nip of late fall when the wild geese fly, is around
you...There is the dignity of a great symphonic march in the succession of
oncoming waves.405
As Abram has pointed out, “If we are thinking in literate, logical terms then these
tones [of the other entities cohabiting our more-than-human world, including through
paintings] are not voices, but when we’re thinking in stories then they are indeed a kind
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of speaking...This whole terrain is talking to our animal body; our actions are the steady
reply.”406 Far from being simply indicative of an erasure of human presence from the
nationalism, the painting, from the ground up, also calls attention to the transformative
power of the wind within the interconnected lives of entities cohabiting places here. The
wind transforms the surface of the lake, the shape of the trees, the actions of the skies,
and the story of the rocks, infusing the place everywhere with life. This same wind here
has, in turn, animated Anishinabeg stories, and resonated again in Thomson’s stories,
each according to their differing carnal immersions in the larger story unfolding around
them.
transformational, life-giving, and even musical energy. In Anishinabe oral histories, the
west wind itself is the father of Nanabush, the supernatural trickster figure, with the
is one of the four elements in Anishinabe creation stories—alongside earth, fire, and
water—that Kitche Manitou (Great Spirit) used to bring forth his dream of a world of
lakes, valleys, forest, streams, animals, plants, and people.408 As Anishinabe artists and
storytellers Basil Johnston and Nokomis have pointed out, Kitche Manitou gave to the
wind the gift of the breath of life and music.409 The west wind, then, naturally sprouts, is
literally “the father of,” the rhythms of all educational and transformational stories of
Trickster-like qualities and energies have been associated with artists in Canada
by commentators such as art historian Allan J. Ryan.410 The new, foundational, and
creationist energy that traditionalist critics of the Group feel in works like The West
Wind, is partly because of this larger place-based story it is already a part of: the west
wind’s life-giving breath and song. It is, of course, not wholly resonating an articulation
exactly like those of the Nanabush stories. It could even be acknowledged that part of
the story animating it might be, say, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous British Romantic
poem, “Ode to the West Wind.” But, I suggest, it could never be predominantly the
latter, and is necessarily at least partly the former because Thomson’s particular carnal
immersion, through which his embodied and performative practice of art emerged, was
precisely within the west wind here. This fundamentally shifts the kind of story that will
unfurl concerning the west wind and a pine tree on the shore of Grand or Cedar Lake,
compared to that concerning (returning to the case of Shelley), the west wind and
deciduous trees on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The extent to which such
integral and reciprocal participation of the more-than-human world in Canada can and
does neutralize the Eurocentricity dominating stories of art in Canada further indicates
the extent to which Thomson’s story might be more of an indigenously oriented one.
What seems like disconnected and subjective interpretations of The West Wind—
sometimes musical, sometimes life-giving for the people viewing it (unifying for
story that is on one level manifested by the power of the wind in the particular place
around Grand or Cedar Lake from the ground up. Even often-discussed trees in The
West Wind are part of the ongoing emergence of the real here. As Johnston points out,
pine trees in Anishinabe oral histories are often synonymous with life and life
acknowledges their interrelationship with the wind in lines one might easily imagine
Thomson also saying in paint: “A tree reflects being...Altered, it restores itself...It abides/
Johnston also points out how there are stories illustrating “man’s dependence
upon the plant world and...the [delicate] fabric of dependence and interdependence.”413
order to demonstrate their interconnection with entities beyond their immediate worlds,
and to guide moral character. As such, stories often involved anthropomorphizing more-
than-human entities, thereby linking certain people, family, or community members with
other beings.414 Bordo’s highly intellectual way of associating Thomson’s and the
denies Thomson and his viewers their embodied experience as indigenous souls in the
The wind and trees have been unfolding musically, transformationally, and
according to differing carnal immersions with them. The staying power of Thomson’s
West Wind in the stories of what is now called Canada is persistent, and shifting—
indeed, like the wind and trees themselves—and takes on lives of its own in others’ life
experience stories here. This is not simply because of some lingering effect of European
equal participation with the west wind itself, and its ever-emergent resurgence process
generating life here. This is why viewers like Thornton can be both a lover of Thomson’s
stories, and a strong advocate for intercultural sharing and First Nations’ rights,
Some of the reality claims made by The West Wind when approached this way,
then, may seem controversial. Contrary to the postcolonial critical trend, I also see it
inviting viewers to recognize that the natural world is not just a passive resource for
human, cultural, and ecological exploitation. It enables the building or kindling of more-
being balanced when Thomson’s trees are anthropomorphized instead of being merely
part of a backdrop for human action, as they are in most European landscape paintings.
Like Bordo, it is significant to me that “the deliberate and systematic absenting of human
European landscape paintings almost always contain humans or human traces of some
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smoke. Perhaps more than any other genre of European art, landscape has also been
frequently associated with the control of lands and its usage, as well as imperialistic and
(because not worked), where right conduct can only be “a kind of play...a traceless way
of acting,” or the anthropomorphic tree only “a cloak for a kind of human presence that
is...static and proprietary.”417 If the latter were the full story, none of these outcomes
would have occurred in Europe, where humans and human traces were everywhere
present in landscape art, and anthropomorphic trees not so prevalent. Yet, to name a
few examples, even with humans in their landscapes, ideas emerged in Europe about
Rousseau and Gilbert White.418 Ideas also emerged there about the wilderness park,
such as the Forest of Fontainebleau in the minds and lives of the Barbizon artists.419
Ideas also emerged about human impositions and the natural world, such as in the work
of Jean-Baptiste Dumas and Charles Darwin.420 And ideas also emerged about static
proprietary rights over land, such as in the work of John Locke.421 The fact that these
ideas and cultural projects all arose out of and around the rise of European landscape
art already in Europe before getting apparently established in Canada (in large part
through the art of Thomson and the Group), should indicate that Bordo’s story is not
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nearly the whole story. It has yet to adequately account for the significant challenge the
Group’s art did make to European landscape conventions by having theirs not be so
From a storied approach, what is being erased from the land in Thomson’s and
Aboriginal presence and ways of knowing, per se, in a wholly and completely colonialist
way. Neither is the land being simply reduced to a mere tabula rasa, and therefore
teaching Canadians to imagine it that way. Rather, what is being erased is more a
strictly Eurocentric way of relating to the land where it is inevitably tabula rasa until
laboured upon or used by humans in the first place. The land as tabula rasa, as
mentioned above, was already a part of European ideology at least since Locke, and
already connected to landscape art that did have human presence, workers, and traces
throughout. It was human usage that thereby gave the land meaning, or implied
peoples’ rights of ownership to it, in art and life. It was precisely for this reason that
Locke doubted North American Indigenous peoples could be proper land owners at all:
they “worked” and lived on the land in different, often nomadic, ways that were not
By taking humans and their traces out of the landscape, Thomson and the
Group, whether consciously or not, are also simultaneously challenging the Eurocentric
way of relating to the land as primarily external property to be worked by humans and
manifested earlier in O’Brien downplaying the importance of the social narrative in his
paintings. In another deepening turn of the spiral, now through Thomson’s embodied
participation in it, “earth narratives” can now be experienced without human subjectivity
at their centre at all. The relationship between the animate earth (the landscape
painting), and animal bodies (the viewer), can now be one that performs the dynamic
synergy of a reciprocal participation into being. This is more the aesthetic equivalent of
The West Wind stories an animate interrelationship between trees, clouds, the
rock, the lake, lichens, the wind, even the fire, which we saw Jackson notice encircling
Thomson’s trees. In this vein, I would suggest that it is no coincidence that Thomson’s
most famous paintings, The West Wind and The Jack Pine (1916-17), both comprise
the latter energetic red outline encompassing his trees. It seems to me that his use of
this line considerably extends the stylistic use of the outline in Art Nouveau design,
which Thomson would have been familiar with. Above-mentioned comments like the
one by Jackson seem to corroborate this. Rather, Thomson’s red outlines seem to share
much more in common with the energetic, life-giving, and relationship-building form
lines encircling the x-rayed entities of a future Norval Morrisseau painting. And this is
not to say that Morrisseau is directly influenced by Thomson here. Rather, perhaps both
Morrisseau and Thomson are able to sink into and express such an aesthetic
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development in their art because they are both tapped into the same indigenously
Human subjectivity, finally, is not completely absent from The West Wind either.
anthropomorphic tree, in such a dialogical and active relationship, does far more than
emergent alliance that is more akin to an Indigenous way of knowing and being with the
land. While there could never respectfully yet be at the time, as Cree art historian
Richard Hill laments, “Thunderbirds in the skies…[or] powerful spirits of the underworld
down in the depths of the lakes” of Thomson’s paintings, there are indeed gestures
toward “fragile human beings in the middle [the viewers], tending their relationships with
these great forces.”423 His viewers can now—dislodged from their proscribed
Eurocentric and Lockeian roles vis à vis land use and ownership—be actively “in the
middle” of an earth narrative in a different kind of way. Taking humans out of his
to envision matter as not merely created but creative; “not a passive blend of chance
coming into being, ever bringing itself forth.”424 Such performativity further indicates the
extent to which the story Thomson was and is telling may be much more of an
The land as backdrop is not just passively mirrored back to viewers as a useless
animate and ever regenerating source of itself, not beholden to Eurocentric ideas of
land use and ownership alone, nor to human subjectivity, even though clearly
immersions in the stories guided them there.425 But being free from the conventional
human actions in European landscapes, and therefore unlike them on a significant level,
Thomson’s and the Group’s stories also make it possible to begin tending “relationships
with these great forces.” One is not limited to experiencing the land, in other words,
through the clatter of cattle drives, haymakers, chainsaws, pickaxes, railroads, and saw
mills alone. One is invited into the mysterious depths of a place long enough to actually
allow it to breathe.
Indeed, this is one way The West Wind helps to restory the local earth. Not in the
colonialist sense that means eradicating any other story but Thomson’s, or restorying
the land with someone else’s (Aboriginal peoples’) stories from the top-down. Rather,
The West Wind helps restory the local earth in the sense that it helps allow the local
earth to be a storied place once again to begin with—restoried in that stories here are
allowed to unfurl, breathe. Thomson and the Group may not have been able to see their
art going in such an open direction, but people like Brown, Barbeau, and Scott could
certainly feel the outcomes resulting from it doing so, which is why they had to
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continually fight and change their tactics over and over again to curb it. Thomson’s
painting can invite viewers into a commitment to particular responsibilities within the
responsibility could be the act of spending more time listening, paying attention to the
myriad other voices cohabiting the more-than-human world, and to the wild and shifting
more-than-human conversation one is always nested within. Such an act would help to
reinvest the earthly cosmos with its own voice(s). Doing so, in turn, could help further
free the human impulse to participate with the more-than-human otherness in a way that
can reawaken the instinctive and dynamic reciprocity between our senses and the
animate earth.
story up again and again, has made it exceedingly difficult for people to imagine their
lives from within it, no matter how frequently—consciously or not—our artists have been
engaging us from precisely this place. As a result, commitments have been broken, and
restitution and Indigenous resurgence has often been slow and painful, though never
halted. Commitment is a performative act, and one often animated and instigated
through stories, just as in a healing session with the late Rose Auger, or with many other
simple “please” or “thank you” to a tree could be a good start. From within such an
exchange, including that between the viewer and The West Wind, everything begins to
have its own dynamism, pulse, and agency, even a tree and a painting. The surrounding
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world is imagined as, then becomes experienced, “less as a collection of objects than
nested within a wider, more-than-human community,” just like it was for Thornton.426
For the first time on a systematic level in the Western world, Thomson’s and the Group’s
relating to the land had been backed off from—a decolonizing movement. This could
happen in Canada not because it is unique, but because, here (as in other places, as
Bolt has demonstrated in Australia), one is carnally immersed in a larger story already
outside a Eurocentric paradigm. Through the storyworking process, this performative art
unfolded in the life experience stories of certain viewers as proof of an “emptying” of the
land to control it; of the dying or disappearance from the world of the surrounding
ways of knowing specifically. This, in turn, echoed in myriad forms of cultural genocide
and the imposition of a Eurocentric form of nationalism and economy over the country
from the top down. We are still effected everyday by this story.
In other life experience stories the art of Thomson and the Group unfolded as a
regenerative invitation, beckoning and gesturing towards people from within a more
storied relationship with the more-than-human world from the ground up. The animate
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earth could be glimpsed as having its own voice; one ever commingling with human
subjectivity and social narrative (the viewer), but not necessarily dominated or
ideas about land use, nationalism, and ownership are necessarily de-centred. Hill’s
Thunderbirds, Yuxweluptun’s crying suns, Houle’s premises for self-rule are not so
much erased, for they were not a part of European landscape conventions in the first
place. Rather, they are given room to rise in the forests and mountains and from out of
the animate earth now that the European peoples and proscribed ways of relating to the
land (as had emerged in European landscape painting there), were weakened.
Furthermore, this occurs in Thomson and the Group’s art (as it did in O’Brien’s in
on the land, for anyone who is simply willing to pay attention and let the animate earth
and its myriad voices begin to speak. From a storied approach, the Group’s landscapes,
then, are not just the more concerted beginnings of Canadian nationalism. They are
also the beginnings, according to a non-Aboriginal carnal immersion, of what Alfred has
referred to as the construction of “an alternative vision [for Canada] that can offer
release from the interminable war that has poisoned relations and psyches on both
sides of the divide between Onkwehonwe and Settlers.”427 This is the case because, in
order for this alternative vision to be realized, “Settlers will need to grow beyond their
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cultural arrogance and learn to be pluralist in their worldviews.” By beginning to take all
people and remnants of Eurocentric ways of relating to the land out of their otherwise
wholly Eurocentric landscapes, the Group’s art gestures toward their own embodied
sinking into the already unfolding indigenously oriented story encompassing them here.
They actually help open the door for the emergence of other, more pluralist worldviews
While this may only seem unintentional to the disembodied intellect, it is obvious
to our animal bodies. As Emily Carr’s subsequent articulation of the story (or Lawrence
Paul Yuxweluptun’s and many others’), also begins to demonstrate, bodies are already
paying attention to the power of the west wind. They are already paying attention to the
unconditional love of the sun for mother earth. They are already paying attention to the
enveloping roundness rooted by the red cedar, or breathing through the dancing
sunlight— neither no less alive than ourselves. They are also already paying attention to
the injustices sustained against Aboriginal peoples through the inherited privileges of
colonialism in our more-than-human world. These are not just disembodied “ideas.” As
Jensen has reminded us, “The metamorphosis of naturally occurring materials into
carefully crafted objects is at the centre of every artwork; it speaks to our human
capacity for transforming the world.”428 This is part and parcel of being human. As
humans are “part of functioning ecosystems,” which are always generating and
presences and absences in the art of Thomson and the Group are just as much a part
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of this dynamic aliveness unfurling from the ground up. We are also affected everyday
Moving beyond the Group, it is generally assumed that their periodic breaks
towards landscapes with people, industry, or cities, are more like anomalies than
exhibiting consistency with their mainly “wildercentric” ideological stance. Or that their
later, more permanent break towards abstraction, especially as regards Harris, was a
weakening of this earlier stance.430 Or that the inclusion into the Group of predominantly
figure artists, like Varley or Holgate, or those with comparatively individualistic styles,
like Fitzgerald, was somewhat strained or confused.431 Or that the break from the
Group’s landscape style in the Canadian artworld more generally—by artists such as
everything it relays, and an embracing of more international styles and ideas.432 Indeed,
leave out a significant part of the story. Even the events of these seeming breaks or
ruptures, from a storied approach, are part and parcel of the indigenously oriented story
The “breaks” are more like living, breathing shifts, nodes, or rhythms of the same
story. The shifts occur because entities participate in the world—its permeating dreams,
awareness, and imagination—from “[their] own angle and orientation, according to the
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proclivities of [their] own flesh.”433 Yet, it is also partly the same story rhythmically
unfurling through these shifts because “It remains the same Earth whose life-giving
breath we all inhabit, the very same mystery that we each experience from our own
place within its depths.”434 Artists in particular can be exceedingly aware of just how
much any interior quality to our mind or imagination is not derived from the fact that it is
located somehow within us, but from a felt sense that we are located within it. As
Bringhurst and Abram have both demonstrated in different ways, “The story that you tell
and are is you but not your own”; the world is made of story, filled with imagination, but
not because it is “our imagination, but rather the world’s imagination, in which our own
actions are participant.”435 It is also for this reason that, in regard to viewers, as Paskow
demonstrates:
experiences, but these are also always nested within, animated by, the larger story
ever-surrounding them. These differences in individual viewers are what organize their
particular carnal immersions within the larger story—making them each a little different
from the next—and tie them each to existence itself right now in a different way. Such is
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why a painting can grab an “individual,” and not another, or grab someone in a different
way than their neighbour. It is also why experiencing a painting, however, can also feel
so tied to the way in which an individual viewer belongs to the world, and is “oriented to
existence itself.”
“the hegemony of the Group,” comprised the impetus for the next major shift in the
mainstream story of art in Canada. It is often associated with the city; transcendentalist
nationalism in Canada.437 Lyman’s famous line that “The real Canadian scene is in the
encapsulates the ideological movement embodied by the shift.438 From the 1930s and
1940s, the international linkages with, and technical influences from Europe and Euro-
more openly sanctioned and, in many cases, embraced. As artist and art historian Gary
Michael Dault has stated, artists became more interested in a “search for personal
meaning,” and so were drawn to the possibilities inherent in an art style that seemed to
allow for “more vitality and freedom in painting than the mere streamlining of nature
could provide.” As such, their quest is predominantly seen by art historians as “fueled to
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In this final section, however, I want to explore how even abstraction is not only
“born from the land,” like landscape art, but another rhythmic articulation of the already
unfurling indigenously oriented story here, according to the carnal immersions of artists
and viewers within it. Furthermore, this larger story is not merely at the margins of a
pulse, mysterious depths, and inescapable pluralism like the myriad lichens breathing
life into the cracks and crevices of the ever expanding and contracting limestone cliffs in
the Rockies. Within this dynamic and living story, ideological innovations originating
composing a part, but also always being moulded and slowly eroded from the ground
up. I will begin by exploring and unlearning some of the more conventional approaches
to some abstraction by art historians. I will then restory abstraction from the ground up
☈⊕♁
One of Borduas’s most important and influential contributions, for Nasgaard, if I read
him correctly, is the way his work both heralds modernism into Canada, and anticipates
the adaptation and importance of some of its most salient features for abstract artists in
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Canada even today. The way his work does this is twofold. First, it was hugely influential
in his own time while being participant in relevant European and Euro-American
modernist concerns, conversations, and directions. Second, it was ever interested in the
“stands as an autonomous object for aesthetic contemplation, but [he] also pushed his
painting into the real world of literal events and made it subject to the vagaries of place
and time.”440 In this way, Borduas straddles the beginning and current variations of
abstraction in Canada. On one hand, his surrealist automatism helped instigate the
quest for, in art historian Jessica Bradley’s words, “the transcendent purity and
autonomy of the art object associated with modernist abstraction.” On the other hand, it
also disrupted commitments to these goals by leaving open the door (stepped through
social world.”441 The latter was the element the Plasticiens largely hoped to eradicate in
their art a decade after Borduas’s Automatistes, in their own carnal immersion within the
of the social world,” as I have been exploring, is always encompassed by the surging
natural world and its indigenously oriented story. Social systems—individual and
ecological systems already animating them and allowing them to be. Yet, this
denied, by commentators on abstract art; both artists and art historians alike, as
task seem quite challenging, for abstraction in large part does claim to be about
emphasizing personal expression or the aesthetic object over and above the observable
world and external natural forms. This is true whether artists have emphasized the
movement as largely associated with Halifax. Even where possible exceptions come up,
where abstraction and representation are more matters of degree along a continuum—
as evidenced by much Vancouver abstraction in the 1950s, and certain individual artists
such as Marion Nicoll, Gordon Smith, and Gershon Iskowitz—it is still predominantly
self-expression, or the autonomous art object alone being privileged when compared
However, my task is also more simple than it might seem. On the surface, events
like Lyman’s battle about the prominence of landscape in Canada with A.Y. Jackson, or
Dault’s synopsis of abstract art mentioned above, do seem to suggest an impetus for
human world. Yet, unlike landscape art, abstract art often exhibits a more overt concern
life and the depths of its mystery; embodied experience itself; or “the intelligence of the
senses.”443 As a result, it is also, paradoxically perhaps, much more deeply linked to the
core of my story here in some important ways. The above characteristics of abstract art,
in other words, are manifestations of how abstraction itself may be carnally immersed in
the larger indigenously oriented story already encompassing it here. In this vein,
artists to paint a certain way from the inside out. It will be helpful to elaborate on this a
little further.
The mainstream story of art in Canada can often emphasize the aesthetic role of
ideological stances, especially with regard to abstract art, through its artist biographies,
origins, and explanations. The privilege given to Clement Greenberg’s hugely influential
theories on Post-Painterly Abstraction within the stories of the Regina Five, the course
of prairie abstraction in general, or in the work of Jack Bush, are prime examples of this.
I suggest that abstract artists, however, are also thinking and painting in a particular way
through them as carnally immersed human beings here. It is this larger story always
encompassing and exceeding artists here, in other words, that makes elements of
aspects of their lives and art in the first place. The salient point to remember being not
only that there were imported contributions participating in artists lives here, but that
now these contributions have also sunken into, and are being animated by, the larger
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place-based story, and its participants, emerging together in a different place. Without
this key relationship intact in our understanding of art in Canada, our written art histories
about abstraction can also become free “to shrink the elemental power of a place.”444
They and the art they story become effectively divorced from the living places that once
carried and embodied them, whether Paris, New York, Montreal, the Rocky Mountains,
or Lake Simcoe. As such, abstract art all starts to seem like it too has “an exclusively
human provenance,”445 whether from Greenberg, Breton, or Borduas and other artists
themselves.
To illustrate, let us revisit an earlier essay, which will also help inform our
storywork with Borduas’s abstractions below. In his 1983 essay “A Sense of Place,”
artist and art historian Terrence Heath began by acknowledging the oft-mentioned shift
in the story of art in Canada away from the dominant landscape representation of the
Plasticiens, Painters Eleven, and the Regina Five. He recognizes that the Group’s
ideological stance softened, expanded, and altered with the times, but then argues that:
For Heath, place, in the work of many artists, “persisted as an animating idea” even if it
assumed “a less obvious role in the artist’s total vision.” It may not have been overtly
“represented,” and may only be hinted at through a camera lens, or from an aerial view
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above. But, nevertheless, abstract painters, to Heath, seemed to cling to the “Canadian
argument with many examples of artworks by artists ranging from Jack Humphrey on
the east coast; Jacques de Tonnancour, Paterson Ewen, and Gordon Rayner in central
Canada; Otto Rogers on the prairies; and Takao Tanabe on the west coast. His
Prince); folk realists or abstract realists (Tim Zuck, E.J. Hughes, David Thauberger);
high realists (Christopher Pratt, Jack Chambers); and mythopoeic or magic realists
his essay (although it is still tinged with some colonialist prejudices). Whereas Burnett
and Schiff, in the same year as Heath’s essay, exclude Aboriginal art from their entire
framework), Heath acknowledges that “the two traditions [Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal]
come together in this country.” As such, “their exchanges have been rich and varied...
[and] changes have ensued in both traditions.”448 He observes that there are “many
bridges by which the non-native artist is able to find reverberations of his own
sensibilities in the art of [the] Indian and Inuit….[for] their work often expresses place
very strongly.”449 At this point, Heath’s argument undergoes a shift. He states that while
artists in Canada have almost always been animated by a sense of place, no matter
their style, technique, or aesthetic ideologies, it is not always by way of what he calls
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“depictor”). Rather, it can also be by way of what he terms “mediation,” where the land is
rendered more “as another subject for whom the artist ‘speaks.’” This art is
characterized by an animism and holism that recognizes “the world is subject as the
artist is subject,” and the interconnectedness of all things, including the art object, the
artist, the viewer as participant, and the more-than-human world.450 Indeed, such
Heath concludes his essay by demonstrating that the “attitude of mediation has become
supports his position with examples. He begins with mention of Emily Carr, and then
moves through works—all exhibiting varying degrees of, and emphases in “mediation”—
by artists such as Jack Shadbolt, Jack Butler, Irene Whittome, Tim Whiten, Richard
Prince, Walter Redinger, Bill Vazan, Liz Magor, Bill Reid, and Karoo Ashevak.
exploring here. But with his adherence to the disciplinary boundary lines of art history,
the revolutionary and cross-cultural potential of his argument, I suggest, was weakened.
Heath still approached “place” as primarily something that can be glimpsed from outside
of it. In regard to art, sense of place was still just a “stance,” an “idea,” almost purely an
intellectual thing that artists put into art, as though it and art could only ever have an
exclusively human provenance. While the idea is “animate” for Heath, there was very
little, if any, indication throughout his essay that places are animate; that the land itself
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has agency. Even when talking about the “mediation” tradition, it is the artist that
necessarily “speaks” for the land, or to it, but never with it. Because of the essay’s
written word, the living and rhythmic power of what Heath observes occurring in the
Canadian artworld—the artists’ stories, the story of art in Canada—was rendered and
fully challenged to listen from outside of their own conventionally trained intellects—
could be largely dismissive of his essay. For writer and historian, Joel H. Kaplan, Heath
toys so much “semantically with definitions [that] they cease to distinguish.”451 But in
saying this, Kaplan too is already erroneously operating from within the assumption that
the wisdom being shared about place and art is Heath’s alone. Tending only to Heath’s
written words as such, place itself can hardly be much more than just an abstracted
human beings, are all always working and living within a much larger, place-based,
indigenously oriented story. Within this unfurling story their thoughts, words, and actions
are participant. It may only seem like the “idea” of place animates them, but the “idea” is
only there because it is within the place, infused by it—the encompassing mind and
imagination of the surging and ever emergent more-than-human world. It is not merely
inside the artist’s mind alone. Cross-culturally, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal art
expresses place not because both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists just happen to
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stumble upon the same idea, but because it is the same place that is expressing,
animating them. Furthermore, this is not to say that there is only one way to interpret or
be in a place. It unfurls within lives according to the varying degrees and hues of carnal
occurring cross-culturally because those are the earth’s, the place’s. They are
sensibilities reverberating through every human being here from the ground up, whether
non-Aboriginal art, he himself is unable to step into the cross-cultural fullness of his own
story embody both the “depiction” and “mediation” traditions, Aboriginal artists all fall
predominantly within the “mediation” tradition alone. Furthermore, the trend in non-
Aboriginal art seems, for Heath, to be moving from “depiction” to “mediation,” even
when Aboriginal symbols and designs are not present within their art, such as in Don
Proch’s masks; Liz Magor’s Four Boys and a Girl (1979), or George Trakas’s landscape
installations. Far from being a mere shift in an ideological stance, this demonstrates the
extent to which it is non-Aboriginal artists, artworks, and ideologies that are already
Aboriginal artists are fully aware that they are always within this story; that their
art and people have been rhythmically unfolding with it for millennia; shifting, innovating,
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and breathing with it according to their particular carnal immersions. This is one reason
why increasing numbers of Aboriginal commentators have been long proclaiming that
there has been no break between “traditional” and “contemporary” Aboriginal art.452
Even when it may look like Aboriginal art is falling more under the influence of a
Eurocentric (art)world, and it partly is too, it is more perceptually accurate to say that it
is happening the other way around: that non-Aboriginal art is being increasingly
stimulated and provoked by a sensuous, storied, indigenous world. In other words, non-
Aboriginal art is dynamically shifting according to the living pace and rhythm of a more-
than-human world from the ground up. And this process is not just about power, about
whose framing is first. It is about rebalancing social and ecological systems within a
place, and cultivating the fertile life along these systems’ edges, in order to promote
occurring in Euro-Canadian art, practices, and ways of knowing, not in Aboriginal art, as
has been so often assumed and storied in the mainstream story of art. This indicates
the extent to which Eurocentric practices and ideologies may also be tenuous or
relationships with the more-than-human world, sink into it, grow from being “depictors”
into “mediators,” and increasingly participate with the larger indigenously oriented story
Returning to Borduas, the story of his art is generally that of a progression from
Abstract Expressionism. His art is generally seen as moving increasingly away from
and background became ever more tightly intermeshed, and any “residual references to
the naturalistic world have been eliminated.”453 For commentators, this has
from outside”; a growing “commitment to the realization of a fully free and creative life”;
and its related search for “unlimited space,” “ideal depth,” or “more clear-cut visibility.” In
truth in all of this, but it is only part of the story. These truths anthropocentrically
received insight at key points along the way. First from Ozias Leduc; then the imported
Automatistes); then the art of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and
What is left out here is the extent to which all of the above reverberate through
Borduas’s life and art in the first place from the ground up, according to his carnal
immersion in the more-than-human world. Without the agency of this larger story
already encompassing him, the insights and stories of the above people and events—
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resonated nearly as much for Borduas’s own life to begin with. The progression that
Borduas’s art generally takes within the mainstream story of art in Canada is itself only
possible because of the more place-based one animating it from the ground up.
Although I would not choose the same terminology as that proposed by Heath, it might
be said that the more emergent progression I am referring to unfurls more like a
performative spiralling between “depiction” and “mediation.” Borduas’s art, on one hand,
may look like a rising progression towards Abstract Expressionism through religious
figure painting, Cubism, and Surrealism. On the other hand, these are all rhythmic
into—the ever unfurling indigenously oriented and place-based story that is already
encompassing him here. It will now be helpful to explore this further with two of his
major stories that emerged from his being in ongoing concert with the larger story
enfolding him. First, the writing of the hugely influential Refus Global (1947-48). Second,
the seeming culmination of his artistic vision in his abstract expressionist “black-and-
whites” (1956-58).
☈⊕♁
The Refus Global was first proposed as early as 1945 by Fernand Leduc a couple of
years after a collection of artists started gathering at Borduas’s home or studio. At the
time, they were all “under the spell of Surrealism” and Borduas’s charisma and artistic
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vision.455 The gatherings—unlike those earlier in the Toronto Arts Students’ League
(1886), the Canadian Art Club (1907), and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (1908),
which led to the formation of the Group of Seven—did not only include painters, but also
dancers, poets, choreographers, and critics. Leduc also proposed that these same
artists officially band together into a group. Their first exhibition occurred in 1946, and
they gained their name, the Automatistes, after a review of their second exhibition the
following year. Borduas, the senior of the group, became more than just their visionary
heart around which they all gathered and circulated, but had been named their leader
as well. Leduc’s idea for their own manifesto gained significant momentum after Breton
published his Surrealist manifesto, Rupture inaugurale (1947), in Paris. This latter
manifesto was signed by one Automatiste, Jean-Paul Riopelle, but Riopelle steered
others in their group away from following suit, and reignited Leduc’s idea of writing their
own. Borduas had always had a mixture of admiration and distrust for Breton and the
1940s to exhibit with his Surrealists in Paris. One important reason for this was
Borduas’s fear that the larger Parisian movement would subsume his smaller
Québécois one. In another turning of the spiral—or articulation of the same story
unfurling through O’Brien, then Thomson and the Group, and so on—Borduas sensed
that his place “demanded an approach quite different from that faced by European
artists.”456
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Borduas started composing the Refus Global in late 1947, circulated it to the
others for feedback, then reworked it into a final draft. The whole group contributed
money for its publication and four hundred copies were printed and sold in 1948. In
Nasgaard’s words:
From its very first sentence, Refus Global is a passionate attack on all the
repressive social, political, historical and religious forces that had shaped the
Quebecois people…[but] Special vehemence is reserved for the decadence and
putrefaction of the Catholic church.457
As is well known, the publication caused a public furor and conservative authorities,
especially the Catholic Church, were emphatic in their condemnation.458 Reid has called
the manifesto “perhaps the single most important social document in Quebec history
and the most important aesthetic statement a Canadian has ever made.”459 Although
not a painting, the Refus has been frequently used by commentators to “explain”
Borduas’s art.460 The two are intricately connected because, for Borduas and his
followers, as Reid has stated, “the creative act could be realized to its fullest potential
only in a liberated individual; therefore politics, personal security, and joyful fulfilment
To mention just one critical link between the manifesto and the art, the Refus
dimension. Automatic painting, from which the group’s name was derived, was a way of
attempting to shut off the persistent invasiveness and dominance of the intellect in the
creative process by painting without any preconceived ideas. Paintings were not to
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begin “with a motif in front of the eye or in the mind’s eye but grew, while being painted,
from letting the touches of paint build up their own inherent formal relations and pictorial
Borduas here tellingly parallels Aboriginal voices like those of, to name only two, Jensen
and Ashevak quoted above. He shifts the emphasis in the creation process from
participation with other material bodies. This is how he also begins to distinguish and
distance himself and the Automatistes from the contemporary Surrealist movement as it
had evolved in Europe. His model for spiritual and social survival in Québec was, as
Nasgaard has suggested, “in effect the automatist artistic act”; freeing oneself from the
while the Refus was being drafted, Borduas intimated what was to become the core of
As long as one Christian value remains, decadence will continue, come what
may. The terrible intentional Christian value system lives on in Communism, in
Surrealism. As long as there is this authoritarian emphasis, decline will continue,
willy-nilly...Intention must be pushed into the background, along with reason.
Make way for the intelligence of the senses.465
He begins his contribution to the Refus with a description of the country that formed
him: a “colony found…enclosed by the sheer walls of fear,’” where the Church and
however, that “pearly drops oozed through the walls…[and] Slowly the breach grew
—changed “The bounds of our dreams…forever,” and then Borduas lays out his
warrior’s call:466
We must break with the conventions of society once and for all, and reject its
utilitarian spirit. We must refuse to function knowingly at less than our physical
and mental potential; refuse to close our eyes to vice and fraud perpetrated in the
name of knowledge or favours or due respect…We refuse to keep silent. Do
what you want with us, but you must hear us out…Make way for magic! Make
way for objective mysteries! Make way for love! Make way for necessities!467
ideas, and hence Borduas’s related art, as though they are Borduas’s—inside his head;
inside his writing; inside his art. These are treated as solitary and individual human acts
in the vein of European modernism from the top down, rendering his words and art
primarily the result of a highly personal and one-way self-projection onto paper or
canvas. While they are him, however, they are not his own, nor of exclusively human
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provenance. As we have seen, this undermines the earthly sentience in which his
sensitive body is situated, and “the enigmatic experience toward which [his] words
point.”468 Because Borduas’s imagination is first provoked and infused by the earthly
place he dwells, and the wider terrain wherein he circulates, his words and automatist
artistic acts are, rather, indigenously oriented at root, not primarily Surrealist or Abstract
Expressionist ones. These are simply other participants in his life experience story
When focusing mainly on these Eurocentric participants in his story alone (as in
our mainstream story of art in Canada), in other words, one is narrowly trying to
“explain” the core of Borduas’s stories with recourse only to knowledge imposed from
elsewhere and derived from our experiences as colonized people. By my listening, this
is precisely what Borduas is also speaking outside of, or even saying not to do. It is the
indigenous orientation of his life as a human being here that makes the abstracted
Surrealism of Breton feel relevant to his life, but ultimately also so incommensurate with
it and his Québec situation, in the first place. From a storied approach, I suggest, then,
that we find the core of Borduas’s Refus and automatic painting—his anti-catholic,
place-based love of his Québec home—more in line with, or gesturing towards, even if
only metaphorically, not abstracted Eurocentric ideologies and art movements alone,
but also the similarly place-based Indigenous art and ways of knowing that they are
Borduas was born in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, on the same side of the St. Lawrence
River from Montreal, and just a few dozen kilometres away from Kahnawake, the
homeland of Mohawk scholar and educator Taiaiake Alfred. I find the similarities and
differences between these two important figures on, what Alfred refers to as, “the
warrior’s path” much more striking, telling, and meaningful than the continual projection
The latter projections undermine the full power of Borduas’s stories for aliveness here.
They undermine the extent to which Borduas’s art and writing—in their attack on central
colonialist institutions and political hierarchies—are also the beginnings of, in Alfred’s
words, a “‘strategy to break down the prejudice that exists in white communities’” when
considered within the larger story always already encompassing him from the ground
Canada in the mainstream story of art, it only does so, paradoxically, from a distance
that ultimately reinforces the story and “authoritarian emphasis” that Borduas’s art
stands to break down. Indeed, as Borduas alludes to in the Refus, little changes
In his passionate, powerful, and moving Wasáse (2009), Alfred points out that he
was not writing about change, but from within it. He is able to do this because the core
of his story emerges “from inside Onkwehonwe [original peoples’] experiences and
[reflects] the ideas, concepts, and languages that have developed over millennia in the
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these same spaces is obviously much different than Alfred’s, and does, of course,
involve Eurocentric and colonialist threads. But this is why it is also so significant that
Borduas can similarly glimpse, as he himself points out, cracks in it—its arrogance, and
hypocrisy—at all. Furthermore, he can then accompany that with action that begins to
question the legitimacy of structures inherent to the colonial state, and the imbalanced
Eurocentric privileges of colonial society. In this regard, Borduas is one of those rare
people in colonial society—often “writers, artists, [or some] spiritual people”—that Alfred
identifies as “exhibiting signs of fully developed humanity,” even though he is not directly
commingling with other entities, and the extent to which his colonial society restricts,
obscures, or denies his participation in the world (freely) as a human being from the
freedom” that seem to echo in, provide context for, or deepen our understanding of
[One of the] big influences that have led to the pacification of our [Onkwehonwe]
mentality...is Christianity. As long as we have the pacification from within the
Christian religion, we always have this mentality of ‘turn the other cheek,’ ‘forgive
and forget,’ that ‘in the end there will be a reward for us somewhere in the white
man’s heaven.’
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We must continue our struggle by engaging its corrupting power at all times and
in all ways, as perpetual warriors. The only way to do this is in creative
contention.473
I am not suggesting that Borduas’s and Alfred’s struggles are identical. On the
contrary, as we have seen, when one’s awareness about active participation in the
“universal connection and at the same time [respect for] our differences...that must be
societies.”474 From a storied approach, Borduas’s struggle and Alfred’s struggle share in
some similarities because the former is always already nested within the latter. The
same displaced and abstracted Christianity that has sometimes labelled “Onkwehonwe
Catholic intellectual, “‘we have faith in God, whose name does not once appear and
oriented story unfurling from the ground up here. It is being told according to each their
Hilaire in particular is also significant. The way the indigenously oriented story ever
unfurling in the ongoing emergence of the real there links Borduas’s body, and the body
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of his art, with the body of his home in a similar way to that mentioned by Alfred when
a particular tradition or community, they connect us to the earth and to our true, natural
existences as human beings.”476 This is also echoed by Simpson, who is aware that her
consciousness is less inside her disembodied brain, but “as a storyteller and a writer [it]
comes from the land because I am the land,” where her body and “beating heart [are
seamlessly linked] to the beating river that flows through my city.”477 Alfred or Simpson’s
carnal immersions are deeply wrapped and rooted by long-unfurling and regenerating
presence within, in Simpson’s case for example, the Otonabee River through
being in a more-than-human world, Borduas was never completely severed from the
land encompassing him and exceeding him either, whether consciously aware of it or
not.
one of the last remnants of primeval Gulf of St. Lawrence lowland forest. The vitality of
the mountain’s plutonic igneous rock skeleton also surges through its vein fillings
comprised of some of the world’s most significant deposits of rare and semi-precious
minerals and gemstones. Some of these include sodalite, and its important variety
senses whereby the stone changes colour when exposed to different levels of light, and
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can return to its original colour again when placed back in the dark. Sodalite in general
is usually of a deep royal blue colour, mottled with patches or veins of white (like an
abstract expressionist painting), and often exhibiting cracks running throughout due to
its six directions of poor cleavage. It can also sometimes be white, light yellowish or
sodalite has also been observed to exhibit characteristics of formation governed by both
elemental structure are not dependent upon kinetic advance, but are thermodynamically
sometimes exhibiting properties that make sodalite unique within each of these
something that Indigenous cultures have never forgotten: that “Crystals aren’t ‘New
consciously know why, humans are and have always been attracted to certain stones.
They are paved into our streets, hang from our necks and ears, enhance our lines of
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communication, emotionally charge us, teach us, and protect us. After generations of
our ancestors using them for exactly these same things, humans remain even today
been tuned so thoroughly to the interior spontaneity of even stones (despite often being
embodied participation with them always already goes beyond mere naïve or
sentimental frivolity.
On one hand, we are drawn to, and empathize with, the enigmatic presence of
stones; yet on the other, this would be very difficult, if not impossible, if we approached
them only and entirely as inanimate or inert objects completely outside ourselves.483
Part of our embodied existence as human beings, no matter what our scientists or
disembodied minds may say, can never perceive the situation in this way. Stones are
the earth’s record keepers; our oldest embodied ancestors on this planet; forever
reminding us of our own physicality, weight, and sensuous participation in the flesh of
the world, especially if we are paying attention (like O’Brien’s hunters in Pinnacle Rock).
instruments, stones and crystals have always been recognized on some level as both
structure of sodalite itself all unfurl in a particular kind of energetic rhythm resonating
from its own interior spontaneity. This sodalitic rhythm and story would have been
heightened and ongoing for Borduas, who learned to paint while nested within the
practice of automatist painting because his body was always already carnally immersed
in its mountainous echo while growing up and living around it. According to his particular
paraphrase Simpson, his art came from the land because his body is seamlessly linked
to the beating mountain whose emphatic presence flows through his city.
humans as a bridging effect between the head and the heart, the mind and the
emotions, rational logic and the great mystery of the spiritual. The mental and emotional
capacities in humans are so provoked by sodalite that it may seem in the beginning that
bodies and the physical are irrelevant to, or relegated by, its story (as with abstract
painting). But when taken deeper, crystal workers often notice that sodalite’s gift for
transitioning between seemingly incommensurate poles like the head and the heart (as
also with abstract painting), helps enhance that individual’s capacity, then, to move in
the physical world; be a more full and complete part of it; and animate it with significant
force. It “helps one to understand the nature of one’s self in relation to the universe.”485
As such, sodalite is widely recognized in the world of rocks, gems, and minerals as a
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communal inner peace (order), because of its powerful ability to work through
(disorder). Some attentive crystal workers have even recognized that sodalite has the
unique capacity for combining “two experiences that one would not think normally go
hand-in-hand”: an intense and jolting bolt of clarity, amidst a profound bed of calmness.
Fears and doubts are diminished by this calm clarity; capacities for intuition, wisdom,
and imagination are heightened; and confidence, direction, and efficiency are
In my view, all this is interwoven in the story unfurling through Borduas and his
art from the ground up. This is an integral part of the larger place-based story his art is
already nested within, and which had been unfurling long before European Surrealism
philosophically relevant to Borduas in the first place, not the other way around. When
Leduc told Breton about Borduas in 1943, it was Borduas’s “sodalitic" qualities of
charisma and strength of vision that he singled out as the impetus for him “[becoming]
our master,” for it was like “The veils fell away, one by one, and truth appeared to us all
in its limpid nakedness.” Borduas was the rock, the sodalite, animating the group of
through Borduas by helping him to unite one of the most disparate and creative groups
of artists in Canada at the time. It echoed in his prowess for communicating deeply
experienced truths through the Refus, which, of course, and unlike any other artist’s
statement in Canada, tapped into a very different expression of holism, order, and
disorder than that which is statically imposed by the imported Church, or other political
or aesthetic hierarchies.
story animated him towards the sodalitic clarity and intuitiveness inherent in automatist
art practice, and its embodied, pre-conceptual path to freedom, action, and inner peace.
continues to resonate in Québec today, working from the ground up through and
seemingly incommensurate poles, and out to the rest of Canada and the world. Far from
being incommensurate, however, this process is actually the growing into, or is a current
articulation of the ongoing emergence of the real here (in Québec), according to the
carnal immersions of bodies in place now. It is ultimately about a way of moving towards
inner peace, just as has always been the story, as Alfred reminds us, of the Tekani
Teioha:te, the Two Row Wampum, or the Four Directions teaching.487 This is exactly
we are always in the middle of it, for everything is always changing in a living, breathing,
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animate more-than-human world. And, as artists often do, Borduas has animated, or
breathed life into a version of this always already unfurling story through his art.
As art historian Louise Vigneault has demonstrated, even after Borduas left
Canada—on a self-imposed exile to New York (1953), then Paris (1955), as a result of
an aesthetic vision always rooted in a relationship with the animate earth here, in
Québec.488 For many art historians, Borduas’s vision culminated in his so-called “black-
and-white” paintings done in Paris. His L’étoile noire (Fig. 19), is frequently mentioned
as such an exemplar, if not his masterpiece. Not surprisingly, these emerged while he
was feeling terribly homesick, for while in New York he was still able to return home
every two or three months. In Paris he dreamed of Canada and wrote that “Never [had
he] felt such loneliness.”489 L’étoile noire (as with other “black-and-whites”), is often
seen primarily as evidence for Borduas’s increasing movement away from Surrealism
and towards a more pure Abstract Expressionism. From a storied approach, it is also a
deeper articulation of Borduas’s sinking into the indigenously oriented story that his soul
longed for; the one which helped shape him through his immersion in the Mont-Saint-
palette knife. The larger surface area is comprised of white tinted rectangular spaces,
the forms being only hinted at by texture created by the ridges of paint left after the knife
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FIG. 19. Paul-Émile Borduas, L’étoile noire, 1957. Oil on canvas, star in the painting’s title.
162.5 x 129.5 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montreal. Gift
of Mr. and Mrs. Gérard Lortie. Some key characteristics of
L’étoile noire that are frequently associated with the top-down influence of Abstract
format” (as opposed to Borduas’s previous figure-ground compositions); (2) its shift from
an evocative poetic title, as in his previous work, to a simple description (sometimes his
later work was titled by just the word “composition” and a number, or even a
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mathematical equation alone without any language at all); and (3) a focus on spatial
ambiguity and visual tension created through nothing but the simplest form and
structure within the art object itself.490 Part of Borduas’s story is, of course, the one
conventionalized by our mainstream story of art in Canada: that he “has learned from
that is not of anything but itself.”491 But the rest of the story is that “making” and “being”
could only finally “become one, and everything,” to use Reid’s words, not primarily
because of Abstract Expressionism, but because Borduas was also a human being,
The above characteristics are actually the various nodes and knots and flows of
Borduas’s shifting within the animate terrain with others (including Abstract
Expressionists as participants), but which are all encompassed and informed by the
indigenously oriented story within which Borduas is always nested. In this vein, Reid’s
and Burnett’s description of L’étoile noire and other “black-and-whites” is telling. They
both emphasize that Borduas’s paintings reached a new level of dynamism and “life,”
yet imply that this was largely the result of Borduas’s move to New York and Paris, and
hence, the top-down influence from Euro-American sources, such as Pollock, Kline,
Motherwell, and Mondrian. Indeed, these other Abstract Expressionist stories grabbed
Borduas and spoke to him, but through the storyworking process these also take on a
life of their own within Borduas’s life experience story because he was always already
part of a much larger story animating him in this direction from the ground up. Borduas’s
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“black-and-whites” are so full of life not only because of Abstract Expressionism, New
York, or Paris, but because Borduas himself is full of and participant in the life process,
“aliveness.”492 This is the larger story everything is always already a part of, no matter
how much one may try to separate from it, or how much one’s culture may erroneously
project that it is. Participation in the larger more-than-human story is also echoing
generally: they were also animated and instigated in their own ways by Indigenous art
others’ experiences with Borduas’s art within the ongoing emergence of the real here.
Reid’s description of L’étoile noire and other “black-and-whites” are brimming with
references to their “translucent” surfaces like “marble”; the surfaces’ aliveness like
“flesh”; L’étoile noire’s “living balance” between the whites and the blacks; its feeling of
“total unity”; the paintings’ being so “full of interrelationships” that they are “a complex,
living thing.” Burnett’s description refers over and over again to the paintings’ dynamism,
not least created by the movement between the whites and the blacks, each taking their
turns in front of the eye in the foreground, then rhythmically retreating to swap places
with the other, and vice versa in a circular unfolding. Nasgaard emphasizes Borduas’s
own terminology whereby the canvas has “its own vibration,” but he then explains and
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associates this aliveness with recourse only to Mondrian. This is not wrong in and of
itself, for Mondrian’s abstraction was also inspired by place. It is just only part of the
story, and largely the only one made available by the mainstream story, thereby
concealing the aliveness of the encompassing places of here. That is the problem.
noticed by Canadian art historians is directly related to the fact that for a pre-conceptual,
aliveness befalls us through our art experiences because of, as Abram demonstrates,
infused by the earthly place we dwell, or the wider terrain in which we circulate.494 Three
course, echo this same story. Borduas’s moving to New York then Paris, as his
homesickness demonstrates, does not so much remove him from this larger story, but
reinforces it and heightens his awareness for its importance in his life because of his
having to live without it, or outside of it. The “more clear-cut visibility” Borduas admits to
searching for in Paris, in this regard, is less about transcending place alone, as Burnett
suggests.495 It is more about belonging to it more deeply. From this alone emerges the
awareness that such holism and aliveness are rooted, as Nasgaard points out, in the
The translucent surfaces of L’étoile noire and other “black-and-whites” are less
like marble, and more like the ever emergent story resonating energetically through the
translucent surfaces of the sodalite at Mont-Saint-Hilaire from the ground up. The
shifting dynamism between the blacks and whites is the same story always already
of its hackmanite that is always already encompassing and infusing him. The total unity,
abundance of interrelationships, and aliveness within Borduas’s paintings are not just a
top-down effect of Mondrian or Pollock, but also a performative resurgence of the story
that has always been unfurling here in this living and diverse place. As commentators
such as Archibald, Bastien, Alfred, Simpson, and many other Aboriginal artists and
scholars demonstrate, interrelationship and holism, (and the necessary sharing across
many diverse edges as a result), is, generally speaking, the story of here. This is the
story we need to keep alive for resilience and life—social and ecological—to occur here
in the first place. This is the story that Borduas’s life and art, as it is with all of us
(according to the particular carnal immersion of each our indigenous souls), is always
CHAPTER SIX:
It was a warm, clear evening in Toka Village, Guyana. The sun had long returned to its
cradle in the earth and we were all gathered around the fire, waiting for a story. I was
there, along with a Cowichan friend of mine from Vancouver Island, an Italian-Canadian
friend from northern Saskatchewan, and various Aboriginal youth we had with us from
across Canada. We were gathered together that night with many villagers of all ages
from around this largely Macushi community that invited us in. An old Macushi man
stood up and welcomed us visitors from Canada into the circle of their community with
honour and sincerity. Then everyone—women, children, and men alike—all stared in
anticipation as he stopped, let the silence in, and then shifted topics.
“That person who knows the story best, holds the power thereof,” he said. And
Instead of telling a story himself, he invited anyone from the gathering who felt
moved to do so to get up and share a story, song, or words from their heart. By the end
of the evening, children had stood up and sang; adults had told stories (some funny,
some more serious); my Cowichan friend shared words from his heart and one of the
songs he carried; I gathered our group of youth together and we shared a song that we
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had been learning; and the Piikani youth with us even shared a story from his
Although I probably couldn’t articulate it at the time, I felt my heart crack open a
little bit that night. I began to sink into a beautiful experience that I was sadly not used to
having in my own life, but which I was clearly longing for. I remembered that my
ancestors may have gathered like this on a fairly regular basis, especially throughout
their winters around Lake Huron. I was also saddened that this kind of sharing seemed
less important, less valued, in my everyday life around me today. I was deeply touched
and inspired by the openness, sincerity, and intellectual gifts that came flying my way
from all directions through what everyone was sharing. In the end, as the old man
foretold, we all held and carried a power through what we knew best: the uninhibited
expression of what was in our hearts. The sharing of it performatively contributed to the
greater power of our community, which was shifting, forming, and emerging as we
spoke. This emergent event in all our lives, in turn, greatly shaped, coloured, and
enhanced our time together for the weeks to come. I felt like I had been swallowed up
by a new kind of story in my own life. It was a story that was more mindful of the power
of sharing and giving away. I am still learning about this now through one of the greatest
gifts I received as a result of what I began to grow into that night: George Simon’s
Shamanic Signs Series [Fertility Petroglyph] (Fig. 20). I will come back to this painting in
a minute.
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That particular evening in Toka was nearer to the beginning of my time in Guyana
than the end. As such, I was able to spend a fair amount of time sinking into the
It was nothing short of magical. I started sharing myself, giving things away, and
opening up to a level of trust like I’ve never done before. I gave away my time from the
heart to help a family in Kurupakari build a new dugout canoe so they could fish more
efficiently for food. I had blisters all over my hands, developed a painful infection in my
arm from the work, and got up every morning at around five o’clock to help, despite the
pain. A couple of days later, an old man gave me one of his most powerful medicines
from his pouch: a jaguar tooth to help protect me in the forest. I carried it with me every
day for about eight years, and only just recently felt compelled to give even this away to
someone very special to me. On another occasion, I gave away a bunch of my songs,
singing to some people gathered in the village of Pakuri. I am not a performer, and had
never sung in public on my own much at all, but I did it nevertheless as I simply felt
guided to share in this way. A little later I was gifted many beautiful pieces of art—
the villagers who had gathered around. I was amazed about just how much I was being
taken care of by just giving myself away without any expectations or fears. Furthermore,
it was not in order to get anything in return, but just to share, and connect, and be,
trusting that that was enough; that that was all the world needed.
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One day I gave one of my prized bald eagle feathers away to a young, future
leader of his community in the village of Aranaputa. It was one of the toughest things I
did while there. I really liked that eagle feather—its size, colouring, beadwork, and
everything about it. I felt like it made me a better person somehow, as though the full
power of it was contained in the possession of the individual thing itself, rather than in
the processes and relationships it was always already intertwining me with through my
storied living with it. I stepped back into my new story and let it go too from my heart.
Many instances in the connection I was developing with this young leader kept shouting
at me that he needed it more than I did, however much it hurt to let it go. He was blown
away by the gift, and deeply moved. It was a moment of gifting I’ll never forget. I have
since found out that a few months later he was, in fact, elected to village council. A few
weeks after that gift, in another village, what happened but that I got it all back and
more. I was gifted, from a completely different person all together, another eagle
feather! But this one was from a harpy eagle—an eagle from that land—and, to me, it
was even bigger and more impressive than the one I had given away earlier. It also
came to me just when I needed it most: a few days prior to getting back on the plane to
take flight back to Canada. I still carry that feather with me today and it constantly
reminds me of the new story I stepped into back then because more was coming still.
Not coincidentally, the same day I received the harpy eagle feather, I was also
invited, with two of my friends, to the home of Lokono Arawak artist, George Simon. I
had met him in his home village (where I had sang the songs mentioned above), the
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week before. He brought us down into his basement, which was filled with painting after
painting all over the walls and floor. They were leaned up against each other in thick
piles against the walls, and stacked in numerous portfolios everywhere; all different
sizes. He pulled out one portfolio of recent paintings that were just hung in an exhibition
opened the portfolio up on a large table in the room, spread the paintings out a bit, and
gently, almost more with his body than with his words, thanked us for being there,
sharing with his community, and then asked us each to choose a painting to take and
carry with us on our journey. I had never had an original painting by a famous artist
before. I was awestruck. Part of me wanted to decline the incredibly generous offer. I
recognized, however, that this was also his way of giving something away from his
heart, so I took a closer look at what was laid out before me. I was immediately grabbed
and beckoned by Into the Mystery. I chose it, but now realize that it most certainly also
chose me.
I was immediately drawn to its central circle and the bean shape within it. My
attention could never stay there for very long, however. As soon as it would enter the
circle with profound yearning, I would feel a deep peace and gratitude to be there come
over me. But then I could not help slipping down the hole at the bottom, as though
journey, for given the comfort I feel in the circle it was largely unexpected, if a little
unsettling. Although not necessarily painful, however, I would still rather be at rest within
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FIG. 20. George Simon, Shamanic Signs Series a new kind of vulnerability and awareness.
[Fertility Petroglyph], 2006. Acrylic on paper, 55.0 x
35.0 cm. Private Collection. My attention is now drawn to the
intestines, even down into my lower abdomen and base of my tailbone. It helps ground
me at the base of the painting too. When I settle in to the relative stillness here, my
awareness is suddenly free to open and widen toward the fullness of the picture more
easily. The wavy lines in the river suddenly connect me also to the wavy lines of energy
outside and moving through the central circle. They also connect me to the patterned
wavy lines around the top of the circle itself. I see the painting differently for the first
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time. All of its aspects now have their own energy, or power, that, although very
different, also contribute integral new dimensions to the painting as a whole. The
colours, lines, movement, stillness, light, and darkness all come together before me and
stimulate a holistic image in my mind of the earth. It strikes me that the complex
connectivity inherent in the painting also embodies that which is inherent in the earth
itself. This is mirrored back to me through the central, globe-like circle that seems to root
relationship that exists between the earth and a womb and birth canal, which I now also
see reflected in this central circle. This calls to mind the downward journey into
vulnerability, outside our comfort zones, even into a certain kind of death, that we all
must take before we can ever fully be able to embrace new life, new views, new
awarenesses—and a new story. Although I could never have articulated it in this kind of
a way within the seconds I had to choose the painting, I remember that that was it in a
nutshell. I remember saying to myself that I choose this painting because it reminded
me of the earth, the womb, and the continuous cycles of death and life inextricably
bound up in them. I don’t know why I wanted something at the time that brought this to
my awareness, but this is what was pulling at me; in spirit, mind, and body.
After choosing the painting, I asked Simon if he could talk a bit about it from his
perspective. He said it was painted after a vision he had during a traditional ceremony in
Haiti a few years earlier. In the vision, he was swallowed by a snake. The experience
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was both incredibly terrifying for him, and incredibly liberating and transformational at
the same time. I was again awestruck. When I was “choosing” the painting, no hint of a
snake, a throat, or being swallowed by anything came up for me at all. After the artist
shared what he shared, however, I looked at the painting again and it seemed so
obvious: of course this was a painting about being swallowed by a snake! I could even
now see a snake above the central circle (which was now also clearly a throat). But the
painting’s story had now also taken on a life of its own within my own life context. The
because I was certainly not as used to having large, deadly snakes around as he was in
the jungles of South America. And yet there was also something the same. Whether
being swallowed by a snake, or sinking into the fullness of one’s relationship with the
earth and the birthing process, stepping into a new story (whatever that would look like
for you), will seem at first unsettling, perhaps even quite painful. Maybe a little like
shedding one’s skin, in order to rejuvenate oneself, and be in the world in a new, more
positive way. Part of oneself may want to resist it intensely, as it certainly is a death of
sorts, but there will also be an ever-present, deeper yearning calling to the soul that
cannot be denied. Furthermore, one has no idea of the gifts that it will bring until one
I realized that while in Guyana the previous months prior to getting that painting
from Simon, I had been swallowed by a snake. I was learning to wear new skin,
shedding the old, and stepping into a new story. Although not necessarily in the guise of
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I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not we were paying attention? Are we ready to
step into a new story? I believe we are, and that many have been slowly answering the
call as the decades have gone by. The way such a sacred life-death-rebirth
transmutation happens will look differently for everyone, depending on one’s own life
experience story. For some it will involve working through some kind of “safe” but
nonproductive thought to achieve wholeness. For others, it will involve working through
things on more emotional, physical, or spiritual planes. For me, Simon’s painting is hung
on my wall in my home, just above where I also keep my guitar and drum bag, and right
drawn from extensively throughout here. I notice the painting (not necessarily in deep
thought either), every time I enter my home, and every time I leave to go work on a
program, write, visit, pray, sing around the campfire, or hike. In other words, every time I
step out to share myself with the world in the way I know best.
The painting also helps me remember just how much the receiving of it at that
particular moment in time—just before getting an eagle feather and taking flight on a
plane back to Canada—was like a ritualized invitation to continue wearing my new skin
as much as I could here. Yes, there was the old story, the puzzle-piece of a life that was
already waiting for me here to slip right back into again with comfort and ease. But I
knew that I didn’t quite fit into it anymore. I am still very much learning to share myself in
ways I learned were important to me while in Guyana, but it gets easier and easier as
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my “new” skin begins, more and more, to feel just like “my” skin. A Cherokee Elder once
surrounding Into the Mystery. I paraphrase like this: it is common and sometimes
easiest to just take first, keep taking in life, and put most of our focus on that. But it’s the
other way around. We never really get anything at all until we give first, sacrifice
something; give of ourselves, our lives, our stories. The earth itself continually teaches
us this. Try, for example, to just take a breath without giving it away first. You can’t really
do it, or it would be incredibly shallow and not that helpful. Try to just take a breath only,
hold on to it forever, and just live like that: you will die.
One of the most significant barriers to our being able to see the fundamentally
privileging of the role of writing, the art historian, and the curator over that of any other
kind of viewer, viewing experience, or orality. I briefly discussed the importance of orality
in my introduction with reference to Ong’s important work in the field. I now want to
enact some of that insight into this story. The final step required in this attempt at
decolonizing the story of art in Canada will be to empower the audience within the re-
storying process as well. In this first section, I will briefly discuss why accounting for art
experience stories shared by viewers who are not the conventional art or art historical
end the chapter with a dialogical narrative analysis of some viewers’ art stories to get an
idea of the storyworking process—the building of the story of art from the ground up—
☈⊕♁
Including viewer art experience stories within the story of art in Canada is crucial, but
closest work to date that attempts such an intervention. His sections on cultivating
readers’ interpretive skills, as well as case studies from a multitude of theoretical angles
and voices, including classroom exchanges with students, are unique, refreshing, and
engaging in this regard. The point of departure for Belton is a concern for the “broad
postmodern trend favouring the [active participation of the] audience over the
traditionally sanctified artist.”497 While important, admirable, and part of the story,
cognitive colonialism, despite postmodernism’s calls for pluralism, diversity, and open-
From an earth-based perspective like the one animating this project, everything is
connected anyway, everything is related. That is why my concern, rather, is more with
and practices to answer or explain almost any question or issue at hand (in this case
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aesthetic ones). One of the movements of decolonization this project enacts is the
complimenting of such Eurocentric dominance with other voices and ways of knowing.
rebalance and enhance the pools of knowledge we all have to draw from. Doing so
increases our social-ecological resilience, and further enriches our lives here.
This chapter may seem at first glance to follow Belton’s kind of art historical
intervention and stem from a similar postmodern foundation. The latter is not, however,
my point of departure. Instead, I see that empowering, and interfacing with the audience
participants in the art process is not just a recent theoretical trend (as is
life-ways and worldviews here. As we have seen, it is already built in, from the ground
It is important to note, then, that this chapter is, quite consciously, not an
audience or reception study. To elaborate, I can now expand here on what I have
already drawn on in Chapter Three from the work of Robert C. Holub. If, as he
nonuniversal criteria shaping and underwriting the slower, more discerning reception of
reception study in North America has been the land.499 Furthermore, this necessarily
encompassed by it here from the ground up. It is not surprising to note two artistic
developments within this context that evidence such statements. First, the migration of
reception study to North America was prefigured by and coincided with the rise of
tended to place greater emphasis on the active participation of the viewer or audience.
In the words of art historian W.J.T. Mitchell, it “seems designed to defeat the notion of
Robert Morris, meaning and self became “constituted in experience [with physical
objects and places] rather than as an a priori.” They emerge through reciprocal and
participatory art encounters into a kind of, what art and cultural historian Maurice Berger
Second, minimalism was also always closely associated with the land art, earth
art, or site-specific art movement concurrently rising in North America as well.502 Artists
such as Morris, and especially Robert Smithson, who also did an earthwork in Canada,
practices “upheld by the institution and, by extension, by critical discourse set up the
spectator for a perceptual fall.” Smithson, in particular, liked to try and accentuate, even
invigorate, such a fall through his art. He challenged what art historian Ann Reynolds
has termed the “sensible” or “intelligible” sight of artistic convention with art soliciting
instead direct experience, emotion, or embodied expression. This was done largely
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through creative earthworks that invited participatory encounters with and in sites of the
world existing outside the gallery.503 For Smithson, a sight that could only be understood
through recourse to privileged intellectualism was no real sight at all because it was
“from a psychological fear of nature, and a distrust of the organic.”505 This is not to say
that Smithson sided absolutely (or “blindly”), with environmentalists, or against the
economics of capitalism. His art, rather, as art historian Ron Graziani has demonstrated,
was a complex hybrid of the two. For Graziani, Smithson became acutely aware of
ecology and industry not as one-way streets, but crossroads, which required more
hierarchy ever privileging the one or the other.506 Not coincidentally, Smithson has even
been linked by some scholars to the tradition of American hieroglyphics, where his work
evokes a kind of linguistic hybridity that balances a more earthly “space in between the
The European influences contributing to the rise of minimalism and earth art in
North America are, of course, part of the story. The larger story encompassing this latter
inviting and encompassing humans and their thoughts, words, and actions from the
ground up here, not just the other way around. These art movements are also other
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articulations of the ongoing emergence of the real through artists sinking into the
rhythms and pulses of the storied and animate earth always already encompassing
them. These same unfurling rhythms, I suggest, in turn influenced the reception of
Art experience stories, then, are crucial to helping re-story, or decolonize, the
story of art in Canada not because of recent postmodern trends in the academy, but
because they have always already been crucial for life here in some way. As Archibald
has pointed out, an integral component to storywork has always been to “keep the spirit
of a story alive by telling it to others and by interacting through and with story.” This
occurs between storyteller and listener, where “the oral tradition ‘implicates the “listener”
into becoming an active participant in the experience of the story.’” It also occurs
between listeners/viewers and each other, or others in their everyday lives, because in
Indigenous cultures one is frequently “taught to pass on what she/he has learned…[as]
relation to Siksikaitsitapi ways of knowing, many kinds of stories here have always
Indigenous peoples through direct experience with animals and the land, “living the laws
of the natural order, respecting the powers emanating from Ihtsipaitapiiyo’pa [Sacred
Power, Source of Life, or Great Mystery], and working with all the powers of the
life” in general, and are not to be held on to for “selfish purposes.”510 For Siksikaitsitapi,
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sharing and giving away “are ways of being that connect to and perpetuate
Ihtsipaitapiiyo’pa.” They are “consistent with the natural order of the universe and help
reciprocity.”511
these aspects were already long-emerging here, from the ground up. Indeed, greater
emphasis has been placed in recent decades on the role of the viewer within many non-
Aboriginal exhibition spaces, theories, and related literature. But one does not have to
visit too many art exhibitions before realizing that there is still a long way to go in this
regard; that there is still a large chasm between talking the talk and walking the talk,
however well-intentioned galleries now aspire to be. Challenging the conventional role
of the art historian, curator, or writing within the experience of art encounters has been a
recurring theme for Aboriginal commentators. The need for other kinds of sharing in the
art process, other kinds of viewer experiences, and the importance of orality in the art
process, for instance, are all taken up by various contributors to Lee-Ann Martin’s
Making a Noise!: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and
Community (2004).
To name just a few of these examples, Cree curator and art historian, Richard
Hill, describes in his essay, “Meeting Ground,” his project of reinstalling the Art Gallery
that one of his guiding principles in doing this was to value “art as part of a discursive,
democratic process of understanding history and the world as we’ve received it,”
another essay, Gurindji Australian artist and curator Brenda L. Croft, laments that “non-
Indigenous people so often demand to know the story behind Indigenous art, as if it is
somehow invalidated without such documents.” For her, this misses the larger point
about how the artwork right in front of the viewer is the story; that they too are now in it
and creating it even as they stand, and think, and feel with/in it. As such, the artwork is
not merely rooted in some relegated past, but is an integral part of the larger story
unfolding all around us together, right now. It is, therefore, not something with a
completely separate story of its own that is primarily outside of everyday experience for
a large portion of the population. Rather, it is also inviting the viewer to recognize his
own participation in, or relationship to, the shaping of that very experience—the story as
it exists and is being lived—today. In one more example, Huron-Wendat sociologist and
curator, Guy Sioui Durand, challenges the art historical privileging of writing to inform art
ways in which art exists in lives experientially—orally—first, and not primarily in the
critical writing about it. “Orality,” he remarks, with great echoes of Ong from earlier, “is
the area where existence is first exercised, conferring all its meaning on the second
If the story of art in Canada is not primarily a European one but an indigenously
oriented one, which I believe it is, then viewer art experience stories are instinctively
part of the process of decolonizing it. They have always been occurring and unfolding
here beneath and behind our books and gallery walls, but have never been fully given
voice within the disciplinary boundary lines of art history. As Hill has just alluded to, the
story of art in Canada must ultimately be a discursive and polyphonic process if it ever
hopes to be able to tell the truth that there are multiple truths. In the last section of this
chapter we will turn our attention now away from the art historical frameworks inscribing,
or implying, what people ought to think when they encounter art, and more towards
what they actually do. The views and stories of ordinary art viewers may not be
representative of anything except themselves. But that is also the point. While they may
not be able to tell the brilliantly eloquent, clear, and examined story of a J. Russell
Harper, Dennis Reid, or Ruth B. Phillips, they can tell an experienced story. This is not
to say that the thoughts and words of ordinary art viewers about art are the final word on
the story of art in Canada either. As I have already mentioned in numerous places, there
is also much to be gained from the conventional story. It is just incomplete on its own.
unless it also acknowledges ways art lives on in the lives of those expected to relate or
I conducted fourteen interviews with Canadian art viewers who have each been
touched, moved, or inspired by it in some way. To help me narrow down the selection
encounters with Albertan art only. The story of art in Alberta, relative to the story of art in
Canada, of course, has some key differences. I briefly outline some of these where
necessary, but for all intents and purposes here, the two stories as we are taught them,
and as they are analyzed and told by art historians/critics, are intricately interwoven and
overlapping, if not virtually the same. In particular, they both greatly privilege European
art theories, practices, influence, and styles. They are also both significantly enhanced
seldom, if ever, done. Also, they both undermine the phenomenological and
performative aspects of art encounters in a more-than-human world. And they are both
indigenously oriented, while also both concealing this characteristic behind the
coordinated participant searches with only four Albertan artists. These artists are
Aboriginal artists Aaron Paquette and Heather Shillinglaw, and non-Aboriginal artists
Interviews ranged, on average, between forty and fifty minutes long, and were
semi-structured in that I had a sheet of basic questions to draw from and guide my
awareness if needed. But the order and number of questions, as well as the emphasis
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given each, were all primarily dependent on the conversation and relationships that
story, I let them go, ran with it, and honoured that aspect in their story, even if it meant I
did not get to ask all the questions on my sheet. In these instances, I tried to stay with
where their passions lie and often asked questions on the spot that were not on my
sheet at all. All interviews were recorded, but not transcribed. The notes informing the
dialogical narrative analysis below were all taken after just listening to the conversations
over again, sometimes more than twice or numerous times. I then sat with them (and
Frank’s preparation questions mentioned in Chapter Three), and let the stories and our
conversation stimulate connections within me, rather than my treating the viewers’
stories like material or data to be cut up, mined, and arranged. I wanted to keep the
embodied voices, stories, and vitality of the conversations alive for as long as possible
before writing anything down from them on the page. Participants had the option to
remain anonymous under a pseudonym. Some did not mind my using their real names.
In these instances, I changed their family names only. Many participants, however, did
want a pseudonym. In some of these instances the participant him or herself wanted to
choose their own name, and in the rest I chose them. I kept the names of companies or
☈⊕♁
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Dirk Romijnen, a marketing and communications officer, designer, and cartoonist from
Vancouver, was going through a tough time in the mid-nineteen-nineties. He was in the
middle of a divorce and was dividing his time between Vancouver and Kelowna to help
look after his boys; two weeks on, two weeks off. During one of his visits to Kelowna he
took refuge in the Kelowna Art Gallery to check out their recent exhibition. “It blew my
mind,” he said. It was “the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.”513 He was telling me
this on a warm spring day in March 2010, but then Dirk proceeded to describe an
artwork from that exhibition over ten years earlier as if the viewing experience was just
yesterday. “There were a number of pieces that moved me,” he continued, “but there
It was a huge square, like about a sandbox deep, filled with clay. It had a glassy,
wet surface and the wall behind it had four four-by-eight sheets of plywood,
maybe six of them…they had a bunch of patterns on them. They were up against
the wall and this box of clay was about two feet deep, I’d say maybe fifteen feet
by ten feet…And then over the course of the few days…the clay would crack and
harden like skin, you know, like a deserty thing. And then up out of this broken
clay comes wheat growing in the shape of a boat.
I was mesmerized by the passion Dirk suddenly spoke with. His enthusiasm was
contagious and I got totally caught up in his story. Wow, I could envision the beautiful
patterns on the plywood. I could feel the word “skin” as he described the cracking and
hardening clay surface. And I shared his amazement for the wheat in the shape of a
“For me,” said Dirk, “it was about life and death interacting together.” “What I like
about Peter [von Tiesenhausen]’s work” (see Fig. 21), he said, “is he acknowledges how
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temporary everything is…So here was this exhibit that had an expiry date [unlike the
Mona Lisa sealed behind bullet-proof glass in its special building and its special room].
“It was alive!,” Dirk exclaimed with astonishment, as his voice rose excitedly to even
louder and higher pitches. “And it will grow up and die,” emphasizing the latter as his
voice dropped back down to earth again with a thud. He then emphatically paused a
second, as though to let his last word really sink into me before continuing: “it was the
first time I found myself going back to the gallery again and again just to see what was
going on with the exhibit because it changed, every few days, like, it was different!”
FIG. 21. Peter von Tiesenhausen, Ship, 1993. Woven willow, rocks, and trees. 33.5 x 6.1
x 4.9 m. Demmitt, Alberta.
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“How temporary everything is,” he repeated almost more to himself this time, and I felt
his awareness return into his own body again before looking back up at me: “yet, was
He couldn’t stop talking there: “it just, ah, spoke to me on a whole bunch of ways,
ah, at the right time, ah, about what I was thinking about.” And then a long pause of
silence washed over Dirk and I could feel an incredible gratitude and power welling up
inside him. It dawned on me that Dirk wasn’t just talking about this artwork on one level
anymore, but also about and with his relationship, his divorce, his kids, his life from that
moment on, and the incredible gift he now felt reassuringly empowered to carry gently
forth to share with the world. It was a gift of vulnerability and integrity, as it seemed like
Von Tiesenhausen’s work was synergistically animating him with a resolve to always tell
the truth, for as impermanent as everything is, there may come a time he might not be
able to anymore. This was a gift that clearly endowed him with an ability to serve with
compassion, and grow into the kind of leader and father he was today. He’s been
stripped down into the heart of vulnerability and come back again renewed. This truth is
in his body, he lives it, just as sure as the artwork itself took on a life of its own within his
life experience story by animating him to return, and return, and return again to the
gallery, like he was also doing for his kids. Dirk has also returned to a new relationship,
whose beautiful truth rhythmically poured out lots into our conversation frequently as
well. And I just had the honour of learning about how Von Tiesenhausen’s art matters in
the everyday life of someone it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Von
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Tiesenhausen’s art taking on a life of its own in Dirk’s life story…and now mine…and
now yours.
amazement at the way hers and artist Heather Shillinglaw’s paths criss-crossed for a
long time before Lily actually encountered Shillinglaw’s art, or even knew she was an
artist. At first, the two mothers would serendipitously meet each other at church and say
“hello” as their kids played together. Then one day, Lily’s own mother came home raving
about this amazing woman at church, her art, and her riveting presentation about her
Cree grandmother, Aboriginal art, Elders, and natural medicines. Lily missed the
presentation and so was only left imagining who this woman could be. It wasn’t until a
little later, after running into Shillinglaw again and hearing her talk about her art in
person, that Lily finally realized that this woman with whom she had been long
connected through their kids was the same artist her mother was raving about that day.
“Oh! you’re the one that my mom was talking about!” she excitedly role-played out for
me in her living room.514 She replayed hers and Shillinglaw’s conversation that day, and
how Shillinglaw started telling her about the art workshops she also facilitated out of her
home. “Oh! I’d like to learn how to do art [like that],” Lily replied. She was fascinated by
art, and fascinated by flowers, herbs, and native plants, as a gardener, and so they
arranged then and there for Lily to partake in one of Shillinglaw’s workshops, all before
Lily proceeded to tell me about first entering Shillinglaw’s home that day for her
lesson. “It was winter time, and it’s dark, and we’re covered in snow,” she said. But
then, through Shillinglaw’s art displayed inside, “you have these beautiful, beautiful
things that remind you of a season that’s coming.” Lily’s voice slowed a bit as she
gathered her thoughts so that I wouldn’t miss a single word: “I was,” she paused, “blown
away…it was not what I expected…[another pause before reiterating]…at all.” “I didn’t
have any expectations of what it was,” she continued, “because it had only been
described to me, I had never seen it.” Lily kept searching for the words to properly
capture the fullness of the experience: “it, it…how can you expect that?,” she began.
“How can you, you—look at what she does!,” she exclaimed, as she happily walked me
over to stand in front of her own Shillinglaw work on the wall. “How can you even
possibly in your little, in my limited imagination, even expect something like that
because if you look at art history, and you look at Aboriginal art…it’s not what she
does…she kind of does her own thing” (see Fig. 22). Lily clearly left Shillinglaw’s home
that day full of welcomed surprise after having had learned much about Shillinglaw’s art.
She got to do so through both hands on instruction, and by being moved to purchase
one of Shillinglaw’s originals from her Medicine Pouch series. Lily’s happiness drew me
No matter what we shared with each other concerning Shillinglaw’s art, Lily kept
bringing the conversation back to the same few kinds of iterations. She must have been
tired of repeating herself, as though I wasn’t paying attention, or really hearing her. For
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Lily, it always seemed to come back to beauty, joy, and life: “I think she’s creating
beautiful things,” she might say. Or she frequently mentioned how Shillinglaw’s
particular collage style, and method of collective creation with not just paint, but musical
score, leather, beads, buttons, and especially watch parts contributed to the beauty and
FIG. 22. Heather Shillinglaw, Medicine Pouches, 2009. Mixed Shillinglaw’s art was beautiful,
media, 50.8 x 40.6 cm. Private Collection.
Lily broke into a cheerful laugh,
replying through the chuckles: “I know! Do we need anything more than beauty?”
I finally quieted my own mind and sunk into this realization she kept coming back
to. My awareness shifted to the last lines of one of my favourite Mary Oliver poems,
“Swan.” After deepening into the myriad layers that unfurled from an encounter with a
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?515
I could suddenly begin to see what Lily was getting at. It had been all around us the
entire time. We weren’t shut up somewhere in some quiet room without any distractions,
as though we were living in a vacuum. Instead, Lily had us sit together in her living room
with tea, and in front of a very large picture window from which the light of the sun easily
lit everything up with an airy lightness. And her kids were running all around us: in and
out of the room playing games and laughing; talking to Lily in the middle of our
conversation; pulling Lily away so she could help with a craft, or direct one of her kids’
actions with a pair of scissors after she had accidentally cut into her clothes. And
throughout, Lily would return to me and our conversation beaming herself with a joy and
vitality that perhaps only a mother knows. Her kids, like her “favourite patch of [native]
orchids out back,” were always already a part of our conversation, as well as of the one
she had ongoing with Shillinglaw’s art. And, I see now, it could not have been any other
way. This was everyday life for Lily, and that was the point all along. They were the
story. Her kids were the beauty, the joy, the life that Lily now cultivated as Shillinglaw’s
art blossomed and took on a life of its own within her life experience story. After all, it
was her kids who even brought Lily to Shillinglaw in the first place. And I just had the
honour of learning about how Shillinglaw’s art matters in the everyday life of someone it
is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Shillinglaw’s art taking on a life of its own
Saskatchewan, and now living in Calgary, was walking down fourth street in Calgary
one Saturday afternoon and was suddenly stopped unexpectedly in his tracks by some
large paintings gesturing towards him from the window of the Master’s Gallery. “Geez,”
he said, as he replayed what was going through his mind that day, “those are really
good oil paintings, like, who is that?”516 The paintings pulled him inside to take a closer
look and he was in awe by what he encountered there. “They had the place full of his
[Chris Flodberg’s] stuff,” Crow recounts, “several really large pieces.” It wasn’t one
painting in particular that captured Crow’s imagination, but the impact of them all
together. “It was more the subject matter and…the quality of work,” he said. The show
Crow was referring to was of Flodberg’s series entitled Matters of Denial. “I haven’t seen
—you do not see [art like this anywhere],” he remarked. And just like that, another story
had clearly begun unfolding for him in his life. That same evening its pulse continued to
Crow and his wife had invited Crow’s sister over for dinner and while gathered
around the table, his sister had something she just had to share. Crow’s voice slowed
and became very expressive to try and recapture his sister’s astonishment: “you
wouldn’t believe the paintings I just saw; they, they just floored me.” “She was just gaga
over these things,” Crow emphasized. And in continuing on with his story, Crow smiled
and replied to his sister, already knowing what she was probably going to say, “you
mean the ones in the Master’s…I saw the same paintings…they’re amazing, I’m gonna
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go back.” And Crow did go back a couple days later and purchased one. The painting
now dominates his dining room, hanging largely on the wall above his own dinner table.
It generates numerous conversations with guests at dinner parties, he tells me, and his
ten year old son will even sometimes talk about it. And like so many others before me, I
For Crow, Flodberg’s painting grabbed him because of its seemingly veiled
invitation to fight. When looking at Flodberg’s lavish feast tables, in their lavish dining
halls—like something right out of Versailles—juxtaposed with the scenes of death and
destruction that have overtaken the ruined world around, Crow feels confronted by their
statements of excess (see Fig. 23). They are “oozing with excess,” Crow remarks. “And
just compound that with the price of one of his paintings, okay, that’s excess,” he states
emphatically. But “it’s all part of it, you know,” he continues, “there’s something about
the fact that this, this guy [Flodberg], he’s, he’s forcing me to do this…and I don’t know if
that’s what he’s thinking, but that’s the feeling that I get.” “I find it provocative,” Crow
says, “and that’s what I like about him.” “Being a crow,” he quips, “it’s in my nature, you
know, I like a good scrap.” Crow feels like Flodberg is taking a jab directly at him as a
successful businessman in corporate Calgary, but finds this deeply honourable: “I like
that he’s doing that…I think ‘good on you [for not pandering to me with a beautiful pump
jack or landscape].’”
As we sink even deeper into Crow’s story, it starts to come clear to me that the
experience story with a remarkable rhythm of courage, maturity, and strength. The
hidden power of his relationship with Flodberg’s art is seemingly inherent, for Crow, not
in the work itself, but in who he envisions Flodberg himself to be as a result of this
encounter. Above all else, Crow chooses to honour and support the commitment,
acknowledging and accepting the whole truth at all times—all one’s successes, and all
one’s failures, such as, in this case, Crow’s becoming swept up in materialism, his
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contributing to environmental destruction, and, as he also told me, his probably living a
life he always told himself he’d never live—can help people overcome their fears or
personal weaknesses. Such a world of truth and resilience is ultimately the kind of world
Crow wants to live in. And Flodberg’s art has helped animate within him the gifts of
Even in the end Crow recognizes that this story is still being written; that the fight
is not yet over. Now, “what’s the last, the latter half of my life gonna be like?,” he puts
out into our conversation as his imagination continues to be fired by Flodberg’s painting.
And just then he breaks into a story of growing up in Saskatchewan, “kickin’ horse turds
in the prairie,” never having to lock their doors, getting on the bike and going down to
the river to fish, killing gophers, and “we did a lot of dreaming, right.” “I have a, kinda
have a yearning to get back there,” he discloses to me. “The older I get,” he continues,
“the more, I guess, you kinda wanna go back to your roots.” And so Flodberg’s art has
taken on a life of its own, continues to rhythmically unfurl in Crow’s life, and I suspect
that he will not back down. Crow’s story continues to unfold like the prairie sky through
his sweeping, dynamic, and living articulations of commitment, authenticity, and courage
in the face of personal challenge and weakness. And I just had the honour of learning
about how Flodberg’s art matters in the everyday life of someone it is supposed to story.
I got to feel the breath of Flodberg’s art taking on a life of its own in Crow’s life story…
The three art stories above, coupled with the one surrounding the encounter with
Paquette’s art introduced at the beginning of Chapter Four, are the kinds of stories that
can be concealed or neglected by the disciplinary boundary lines and conventional story
of art in Canada. But these are the gold. These kinds of stories are the ones through
which we glimpse the real story of art in Canada flowing, breathing. They are the ones
animating Canadians through art experiences that inevitably unfurl into the current faces
of culture and society right now. Returning to my Introduction, if Reid is correct, and I
believe he is, when he says that painting “most directly presents the Canadian
experience,” then our story of art clearly has much more work to do yet. For I hear a lot
of thought in it, but very little experience beyond an artist’s alone. I get nothing in our
conventional story of, say, Dirk’s compassion and integrity as a leader that fuels his life
experience story, and hence many others in Vancouver, from the ground up; of Lily’s
boundless capacity to love and care for the children, the earth, and people around her in
Edmonton; or of Crow’s unwavering courage and commitment to help lift his world out of
the sloughs of fear, mediocrity, and personal weakness in Calgary. Within such stories
as these lies the Canadian experience as it is living and breathing and co-emerging into
the real today. And such stories are unfurling all around us, if we pay attention.
Various elements have also come to characterize the chapter in the master
narrative of art in Canada that we may refer to here as the conventional story of art in
Alberta. These might include the unique importance of Maxwell Bates, W.L. Stevenson,
and Marion Nicoll within the story; the different aesthetic directions taken between
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Calgary and Edmonton; and the provincial democratization of the arts in the 1960s
facilitated by Les Graff. It will be helpful to explore art experience stories like the ones
above within the context of three other overlapping elements that have also come to
characterize the story of art in Alberta: (1) the fierce individualism of Alberta artists on
account of being “on the periphery of the established art world”;517 (2) the close linkage
between handmade crafts, especially ceramics, and other art forms, relative to other
parts of Canada;518 and (3) the unapologetic embracing of the landscape genre and
concern for place, even long after these fell out of fashion in national and international
aesthetic and academic practices.519 In the conventional story of art in Alberta these
characteristics help outline ways it differs from the larger story of art in Canada more
generally. For the remainder of this chapter I explore the question of how, then, might
the storywork like that beginning to unfold above through the art of Von Tiesenhausen,
In one of the main texts establishing the story of art in Alberta, art historian Nancy
The story she tells has been mirrored by others, and has been characterized as one “of
the struggle and full flowering of a grassroots culture developing from the inside out in
an isolated province that tried to both appease and to rally against great colonial
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forces.” Five major factors, Townshend remarks, “ensured that individualism was
entrenched in Alberta’s modern post-war art.”520 These factors include: differing ways of
objectifying the world; the advocating of personal expression by key mentors; varied
Although these are all part of the story, of course, these are all human factors—
and ones emphasizing an artist’s life alone. When privileged, as we have already seen,
they can lead to the neglect of the more-than-human world always already enfolding the
artist and artworld in the first place. Albertan artworks, just like anything else, while
individual at all. They are also integral parts in the co-emergence of the real here
alongside many other aspects of our more-than-human world. And to the extent that one
artist’s style and practices differ from another’s, this is not unique to Alberta.
When approached from the ground up, it becomes less important to emphasize
story. It becomes much more important to recognize how this, rather, unfolds in life
experience stories in order to attain balance and harmony, not aloneness, isolation, and
struggle. Not surprisingly, individualism is not one of Frank’s story capacities, nor one of
Archibald’s storywork principles. In fact, it is just the opposite. In Archibald’s words, “the
design may be attributed to a particular person, [but] her designs reflect her relationship
with family, community, nation, land, and nature (my emphasis).”521 A storied approach
to art in Alberta can both acknowledge the individuality marking an artist’s designs and
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artworld, and emphasize that this is still ultimately about their interrelatedness. Stories,
as we know, breathe, always work with something, and take on a life of their own.
When asking participants about what grabbed them, drew them in, and captured
their attention about the Alberta artworks inspiring them, they almost unanimously
started off with some particular aspect of the artwork. Mana Hill, a Métis and lover of
Paquette’s art in Edmonton, could not stop talking about Paquette’s work Unexpected
Thunder, which she purchased some years back. “That is by far my favourite,” she
emphasized, “I don’t know how to explain it—it’s just, it’s just he’s captured it, like, the
title is so appropriate for the painting.”522 “It’s very simple,” she continues, “but it just
takes your breath away because its simplistic, but yet it just kind of throws you back.” As
she continued to deepen into the story it became clear that the particular way Paquette
uses his ravens and birds in his art was in large part what “drew [her] to him.” “I love the
birds,” she repeated more than once during our conversation. Mana Hill also owns
some original Alex Janvier and Daphne Odjig works, but feels that Paquette speaks to
her relationship with the natural world “more than probably any other artist.” For her,
Similarly, Lisa Victors, an artist and curator in Sarnia, Ontario, also credited an
individuality in Von Tiesenhausen’s work for grabbing her in what came to be a profound
way. She was in the midst of helping her community plan a major commemorative event
for the 150 year anniversary of the first commercial oil well in North America. She spent
a considerable amount of time searching for an artist that could engage the community
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from not just a critical perspective on what such an event might signify, but one that
could provide an honest opening for community dialogue. She was struck by one of Von
Tiesenhausen’s works as it crossed her desk one day in a magazine. The image
captivating her was simply the carving of an eye in a number of trees. It was the
“subtlety,” she said, “I almost feel like that burns into people more than…the more
blatant kinds of expressions.”523 It inspired her to search out more Von Tiesenhausen
works only to discover that “they’re all just amazing images.” “I looked at many artists,”
she iterated, “who call themselves environmental artists, and it didn’t resonate, you
overflowing with surprise when describing an encounter with some of his favourite
him one day that “the trees were cool because you realized ‘okay, there’s something
different going on in this guy’s brain.’”524 Geoff was captivated because “the stories that
went along with the trees had nothing to do with the trees.” “This is actually really…it’s
different—it’s different,” Geoff repeated with emphasis, “he’s [Flodberg’s] got something
different going on than anything that I’ve seen.” This element of individuality moved
Geoff so much that he purchased one particular painting of a tiger that he could not take
his eyes off of. The painting still surprises him to this day because he really doesn’t feel,
nor has ever felt, any kind of affinity or connection with tigers at all. “It just was a, it was
a very neat painting,” he said, pausing in between each of the last three words to make
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sure I really got them, “it was literally…I just, I remember looking at it thinking ‘that
While the individuality of the artworks in the above art experience stories was
clearly important, this was never the whole story. Mana Hill was grabbed by the
individuality of Paquette’s simple style utilizing many kinds of birds and bird forms. As
she sank deeper into her story, however, I was increasingly touched by how the
for a parched spirit that longed no more to struggle in isolation, but to fully belong to the
world. “It fills my soul, it fills my soul,” she stated twice with an undeniable satisfaction:
it’s in the room, you know, where my computer is—you know, I see it everyday—
and there’s some pieces that…[are nice pieces], but it’s like whatever, it doesn’t
really do much…when I see this one here [Unexpected Thunder], it definitely fills
my soul.
Mana Hill was adopted when very young by a Polish couple, strong Roman Catholics,
and only found out at the age of eighteen that she was Métis. Her adopted parents kept
that part of her hidden because they thought it would bother her to find out she had
Aboriginal blood. In fact, the opposite happened and she has been on a search ever
since to rediscover who she truly is. She’s reconnected with half-siblings, in particular a
half-brother in Fort Chipewyan, who was never severed from his Aboriginal heritage like
she was, and so he’s taught her a lot. It was this always already unfolding story in her
life that drew her to Aboriginal art, and especially Paquette’s, in the first place.
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Part of the draw, however, was also that Paquette’s art was on some level never
really something she just finally met somewhere. They were in each other all along, like
stories already waiting to have life breathed into them. Mana Hill’s given Métis name at
birth was a word for “bird.” Paquette’s art, and Unexpected Thunder in particular, has
animated her, replenishes her, in her own life experience story in a way that goes way
beyond any matter of “interpreting the artwork.” “It has helped me to find a sense of
identity,” she pointed out in our conversation. And as we got talking further about her
pull towards Aboriginal art, her voice suddenly lit up with an incredible joy and lightness
as she could not help but reply by way of another related story.
She told me about meeting a Métis man in a shop in Edmonton who, after a
conversation about their heritage, invited her to a wake for a respected Elder who had
recently passed into spirit. She accepted the invitation, and I could feel her body start to
smile with warmth through the phone as she proceeded to tell me about the circle dance
she got to participate in while there: “that was the first circle dance that I had been to,
and you know what Troy, I sat there and I thought, you know, ahhh, I’m home. Like, it
felt so…it felt comforting, and just, like, so familiar. It was pretty wild.” Wow, I thought to
myself, unexpected thunder, indeed, all around her. Just as Archibald has reminded us,
“Stories have the power to make our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits work together” if
we are paying attention and letting them breathe. And just like the cleansing and
rejuvenating rains pouring gently over a sacred wound, Paquette’s art has taken on a
life of its own in Mana Hill’s life experience story. It is an important companion—a
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material semiotic companion—for her as she continues to remember that she always
has been part of a much larger more-than-human story enfolding her all along. And I
just had the honour of learning about how Paquette’s art matters in the everyday life of
someone it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Paquette’s art taking on a life
of its own in Mana Hill’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
Lisa Victors was grabbed by the individuality of Von Tiesenhausen’s subtle, open,
and engaging approach to environmental art. As she sank deeper into her story,
however, it also became clear just how much the individuality, for her, was more about
individuality alone. She returned again and again in our conversation to mentioning how
integral to the entire experience of Von Tiesenhausen’s installation in her gallery was his
being there in person, and “actually talking to the guy.” Von Tiesenhausen’s unique way
of doing his installations necessitates his being in and engaging with the community,
listening, paying attention, and participating for at least ten days prior to the opening of
the show. Very little is pre-planned or arranged. He creates the work from the ground up
in that time with whatever is available and becomes available to him while there. This
For her, “much of his work…was as much about the ten days he spent in the
community creating the work and engaging the community in that process.” “That…
continues to resonate here,” she remarks with clear and profound admiration, “people…
remember being part of something when Peter was here more than, and they talk about
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that more than, what was actually in the installation.” Construction workers, for example,
and other people who would not necessarily be your typical gallery-goers were coming
in and out on their lunch breaks to show friends the work they had helped move in or
out in some way. She is also aware from numerous conversations that “many people
miss him dearly and want me to bring him back.” “It was just this total community
engagement,” she repeated in awe, “and then there was the curiosity, and then there
was dialogue.” CBC was even calling her to find out what was going on. “You know,
there was this creation of a myth,” Lisa remarked, and it has kept on rhythmically
articulating through the community in different life experience stories: “it continues to
stories that had unfurled from this experience, which continued to unexpectedly connect
what was going on in Sarnia to wider conversations and events, including to Von
Tiesenhausen’s trip to the Arctic some years before for another art project called The
Watchers, and to the coast guard ship he used to get there. There was like this
unexpected “web of connectivity with others in the world,” Lisa pointed out. They felt
part of a much larger story always already going on around them than what might have
been immediately evident if focusing on just the artist, the artwork, or community alone.
As I got more and more caught up in all of the stories surrounding her experience
with Von Tiesenhausen’s work, I began to see just how much it took on a life of its own
in so many lives, especially within Lisa’s own life experience story. She herself is an
seems to me, resonates so much with her because it animates her own incredible gift
she carries for the world. After weaving me through more stories relating to Von
Tiesenhausen’s work, she disclosed that the capacity to continue to “reach for what’s
beyond your grasp…that’s what excites me, or that moves me…and Peter’s got it in
spades!”
That’s just it. From what I hear, Lisa does too. She put an incredible amount of
work into helping Von Tiesenhausen complete his installation by securing municipal
process), to bury a bust of one of his Watchers fifteen feet below the sewers
underground, just outside the gallery. She’s involved in city council meetings. She hosts
regular open dialogue nights at the gallery to help create openings for dialogue and
community connection around anything and for anyone through art. All this in the name
of the recurring themes running throughout our conversation: community, dialogue, and
connection, not just in particular aspects of the painting itself. Von Tiesenhausen’s work
is a companion that has helped animate this within her so she can continue to help her
community reach for what might seem beyond their grasp at times: a fully engaged and
connected community in all their differences. Even if people have to begin by saying,
“well I don’t get it…why is this art?,” Lisa says, “that in itself opens the dialogue.” And I
just had the honour of learning about how Von Tiesenhausen’s art matters in the
everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Von
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Tiesenhausen’s art taking on a life of its own in Lisa’s life story…and now mine…and
now yours.
perceived mental process lying behind his paintings. As he sank deeper into his story,
however, it was precisely this perceived individuality that helped enable Geoff to belong
more fully to the world, not stand proud in a false sense of individualism. Repeatedly
throughout our conversation, I found myself somewhat thwarted when trying to talk to
Geoff about what it was specifically that he liked about some Flodberg artworks. On one
level, I could tell he was absolutely mesmerized by Flodberg’s art, that it definitely
captured his imagination, for his voice was highly expressive and full of emotion. On
another level, however, it kept weirdly seeming to me that he didn’t like his art.
purchasing. But he also kept telling me over and over again that he didn’t really like
tigers, and that any experience he’d ever had with tigers did not influence his pull
towards the painting at all. He was adamant. Similarly, the trees in Flodberg’s
landscapes captivated him immensely (see Fig. 24). But although Geoff does love
nature, he told me that his captivation by these particular paintings had nothing to do
with trees themselves, or the landscape in general. Furthermore, Geoff would frequently
mention things like: “I couldn’t tell you [what the trees represent], you’d have to ask
Chris [Flodberg],” or “I don’t claim to be able to understand what goes on,” or “I don’t
know what the significance of it is.” He would continually pull back from the paintings,
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physically, emotionally, and intellectually, on one hand, but on the other, was clearly very
engaged through every cell of his body nevertheless. I started to give up on trying to
figure out why he could possibly like these paintings so much when he seemed to feel
so little connection to the actual content or meaning in them. Just then I realized that
story.
an awareness of…Chris
[Flodberg]…that there’s
FIG. 24. Chris Flodberg, Late Summer Reflections, c.2004. Oil first, the physical thing is, to
on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 cm. Location unknown.
me, the second,” he stated. As
we deepened into this story, it became even clearer. It didn’t even necessarily matter
what that mental process was, for him; just that there was this amazing mental process
at all. “That’s right, that’s right,” he smiled, physically elated to have the awareness
finally out, spoken, heard. “That’s exactly it, that’s exactly it,” he repeated again with
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emphasis. And then the floodgates opened. Our conversation surrounding Flodberg’s
art took on a life of its own, weaving through stories of John Lennon, Freddy Mercury,
brilliant cosmetic surgeons in his field pushing boundaries with face transplants, NASA
astronauts trying to come up with ways to melt polar ice caps on Mars and create new
“people who really do think out[side the box], and come up with stuff [creatively].” “Yes,
most definitely,” he reiterates, “most definitely.” “Just that same thing,” he continues,
“you have somebody like Chris [Flodberg], where that just has to come out of you…it’s
that which impresses me.” This is very important to Geoff, for the breaking of new
ground, the trying of new stuff, he says, is how “we gain more knowledge.” “The
master something that I know I’ll never be able to accomplish…I just love it, I truly love
it.”
“It would never enter into my mind,” Geoff says, pointing towards the Flodberg
painting hanging on the wall behind me in his office, “to put a breakfast table filled up
with food and put it in front of a city with an airplane landing behind it.” And towards the
end of our conversation full of statements like this, I was suddenly struck by Geoff’s
incredible humility. As a successful medical doctor, Geoff’s ego has plenty of opportunity
to grow, inflate, and dominate, yet he is genuinely fascinated with people, what makes
them tick, and learning. Flodberg’s art animates his own life experience story with an
insatiable and refreshing childlike wonder for the world and all of its creation. This is an
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incredible gift that I felt in touch with even after only talking with him for less than an
hour. In more ways than one, Geoff’s story is one about the preciousness of the
imagination, of vision, and of wonder. And these and Flodberg’s mastery of his art are,
indeed, aspects of modernism more broadly. But here they interestingly come into their
own through the experience of belonging more fully to the world as a humble, though
highly specialized, medical doctor. Moreover, they are all encompassed within his
playful personality and character that allows for a trust that everyone is doing exactly
what they are meant to do. This is not just an intellectual “interpretation” of Flodberg’s
art, this is how it lives on in Geoff’s life. And I just had the honour of learning about how
Flodberg’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got
to feel the breath of Flodberg’s art taking on a life of its own in Geoff’s life story…and
One of the endpoints currently finalizing our story of art in Alberta is that art and
the artworld here have always revelled in its individuality. If we stop part way through
the art process at the artist’s life and artwork alone, it does seem like this is so; it is part
of the story. But ending the story here also stifles the work’s full story, and ways in which
it is always already working with, animating, and instigating lives in our more-than-
☈⊕♁
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The two other major characteristics mentioned above, which have also helped art
historians summarize the story of art in Alberta, will be explored together in this final
section. For our purposes here, Alberta’s crafting movement and persistent embrace of
the landscape genre, are related because they are both rooted in a strong sense of
regionalism. This, in turn, is also how these characteristics overlap with the idea of
individuality explored above, for it is also linked to regionalism. After all, Alberta’s
landscape is, of course, different than that of other provinces. Townshend remarks that
during a relatively hermetic period.” She quotes Alberta craft pioneer Luke Lindoe in
saying, with reference to ceramics specifically, “‘we were able to be isolated and
any apron strings.’”525 Along with the teachings and work of another major Alberta craft
pioneer and artist, Marion Nicoll, such sentiments ensured that craft constituted an
important foundation in Alberta’s artworld. Lindoe and Nicoll were both strong advocates
for handmade objects exhibiting self-reliance in the maker, and utilizing local materials
and place in handmade art also links craft with Alberta artists’ long association with
landscape and art concerned with place and nature. The most sophisticated and
informative exploration of this characteristic in the story of art in Alberta is art writer and
landscape painting in Alberta has “never been about just one thing,” Laviolette broadens
continuing tradition of landscape, nature, and place-based art in Alberta.527 Within this
Leighton, Maxwell Bates, Roland Gissing, H.G. Glyde, and Marion Nicoll—were most
interested in the landscape as subject matter. This was largely the case whether or not
Christopher, John McKee, William Duma, Harry Savage, Robert Sinclair, Takao Tanabe,
and Norman Yates—were less interested, according to Laviolette, in what was being
told, and more in how it was being told. The third and current generation—including
Jeffrey Spalding, Stephen Hutchings, Brent Laycock, Chris Flodberg, Peter von
Tiesenhausen, Lyndal Osborne, Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, and Joane Cardinal-
Schubert—“examine more closely the content of their subject matter and what they
want to say about it.” As such, the subject’s “meanings, connotations, and associations,
including related social and political issues,” are often touched on by this generation.
The new immediacy and elementalism in third-generation works, in turn, branches out
into art more generally concerned with nature and the environment in all its diversity, as
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well as into works of shared concern but utilizing new media, such as photography,
video, nature itself, and other mixed media items. The concerns of third-generation
artists also branch out into art that is more particularly concerned with place—namely,
the place called Alberta.528 Laviolette does point out some instances where certain
Maureen Enns, Ted Godwin, Dulcie Foo Fat, and Von Tiesenhausen—can sometimes
straddle two categories at the same time. Most it seems, however, can be categorized
Clearly, all of these shifts in the Alberta artworld are part of the story; they each
embody a truth in the story of art in Alberta. They are also all approached by Laviolette
in a Eurocentric way that emphasizes imported art practices and theories, despite her
unique concern for place, here. The following are just a few examples demonstrating
this emphasis, even if only unintentional. First, it was the “first generation [of landscape
artists who] established landscape as a primary subject matter for art in Alberta,” and
less so “the overwhelming presence of the environment” itself.529 The human activity,
here, tends to be privileged over the larger story it is always already encompassed by.
Second, Laviolette states that the second-generation prairie modernists “apply many of
the practices of 1960s [New York] abstract painting to create…The Big Picture.”530 This
the big picture here, rather than the living, expansive, earthly big picture always already
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itself from the ground up through collaboration with Colour-Field painting in the first
Postmodernism heralding that “an artistic sea change is underway in Canada,” by way
toward other socio-political issues, and enabling the rise of contemporary Aboriginal art
and its concerns. This erroneously assumes that some of the key insights offered by
postmodernism, as we have already seen, were not already available here from the
ground up. On the contrary, many postmodern insights had already long-been
The extent to which these common omissions infiltrate every level of our
conventional story of art in Alberta can be elaborated on through a look, for example, at
what Laviolette says about the place of Lindoe's and Von Tiesenhausen’s art within the
story. She quotes from a 1992 Lindoe artist statement when he wrote: “Art is not the
relationship with the natural world.”532 She then diminishes the full potential of the
unaccommodating nature in the face of connoisseurs: “that’s Luke Lindoe for you. He
seemed to spar with all of the labels attached to him.” And then she proceeds to label
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him herself from the top down as an “early modernist” ceramic sculptor, painter, and
Laviolette also quotes from Von Tiesenhausen himself, who says his work is
“communicating nature as nature does, directly through the senses.”534 But then she
elemental and more heightened art,” bridging “the older tradition of landscape painting
and the…other methods and media used by Alberta artists to engage with the
landscape and the natural world around them.” The very ground-up, embodied
not denied outright. Within the disciplinary boundary lines of her writing, Laviolette can
only talk about “being inter-connected or intimate with the environment [as] an
aspiration for some Alberta artists [my emphasis], and a desire that the highly urbanized
contemporary art world can barely grasp.”535 She cannot fully acknowledge that “being
human beings, no matter how urbanized. These Eurocentric predispositions when one
is trying to discuss the human-nature connection, even if only unintentional, indicate that
the story they amount to can only ever be part of the story. They too presume to explain
artists’ stories, rather than allowing them to breathe. And the indigenously oriented
storywork process always already enfolding artists and their art from the ground up is
concealed or denied.
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stories, however, was that the artwork itself was never the end of the story. It was never
really the beginning of anything either, if by that is meant a definitive transition point
whereby everything from that point onward is different due to the artist’s message. This
places way too much emphasis on art as a transition point, and not enough on what
happens between transition points. This is one reason why Archibald’s conversation
with Elder and storyteller Tillie Guiterrez so resonates for me here. It is worth repeating:
art does not give answers, it shows the way. Similarly, many participants animated an
awareness in me for just how much there seemed to be a disconnect between everyday
art lovers, on one hand, and the conventional stories art historians often imply are ours
as Canadians, on the other. Not all participants read art historical works, though many
did and were quite knowledgeable in the conventional story of art in Canada. Either
way, for most, the stories art historians told did not seem “to fit” completely, or left them
feeling a lack of confidence in their own embodied encounters with the artworks.
One of the most outspoken participants in this regard was Peter Ross, a hotel
manager in Banff, and lover of Von Tiesenhausen’s work. For Peter, the most exciting
moments when encountering art come from doing the work oneself because “it’s there
already,” he emphasizes with a pause, so I would really get the power of what he was
saying. He has attended speaker sessions at galleries before, but is sometimes “turned
off” by listening to art historians speak. These speakers, he says, sometimes “seem to
may have “at presenting art,” most of what they say just seems to be what he calls “art
babble.” He does not feel that they include him and his reality much at all.536 Another
coordinator and photographer from Calgary, recognizes that art is in part “a language of
specialists,” just like one would go to a geologist to find out more about rocks, but it also
It seems to me that, in general, the language and stories of art have not been
kept that open and accessible for the most part, although this circumstance does also
seem to be changing. The telling of a story of art, or the doing of art history or criticism,
in my view, should not preclude or undermine a viewer’s capacity for art appreciation
community may begin to feel like the story being told about them, or that is supposedly
relating to them in some important social-ecological ways, does not fit. Participants
would frequently question their own experience after passionately opening up to me.
They would question whether or not they really got the message intended by the artist,
or really knew what they were talking about even though they were not some kind of
expert. These moments deeply saddened me, for their own beautiful, empowering, and
often inspirational art experience stories were often immediately devalued within their
lives as though they needed to be experts on “art,” as opposed to experts on the pain of
broken relationships and promises; on the love of one’s children; on the love of the
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earth and natural world encompassing us all; on missing home; or on the knowledge, or
lack thereof, of each our own ancestors and gifts we carry for the world.
Nature and the land are, of course, key elements in Alberta artwork, whether by a
first, second, or third generation landscape artist, or an artist more generally concerned
with nature in all of its manifestations. But as human beings always encompassed by a
more-than-human world, nature is always gesturing towards and articulating itself within
our life experience stories in vastly different ways, according to each our own carnal
immersions within it. This is why when Von Tiesenhausen’s (through Dirk’s), story is
approached from the ground up it becomes about far more than just an aspiration to an
within the artist himself. Such is part of the story, but so is the temporality of other
aspects in Dirk’s life, as well as his integrity, truth telling, and compassion, which,
although related, of course, may not necessarily be about or directly concerned with the
land at all. This is also how Flodberg’s statements of excess within ruined cityscapes, or
his paintings of both obliterated and pristine environments, can be environmentalist, and
also animate childlike wonder for people, as well as a commitment to confront personal
Miriam Landrenne, a highly respected Elder in the Métis Nation and activist for
and honour when looking at and talking about Shillinglaw’s art. As we heard in Lily’s art
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experience story above, Miriam is also animated by Alberta, the landscape, and the
natural world surrounding us through Shillinglaw’s work. She is particularly pulled into
one of the works Shillinglaw had recently given her as a gift—and which she is showing
me as we speak (Fig. 22). Sprawling across the picture plane are tall chutes of leaves
and stems extending from top to bottom and almost completely blocking out the sky in
the background, which is only visible in the small spaces between the foregrounded
flowers. Almost immediately the painting captures Miriam’s imagination and animates
the joy she feels when lying in the tall prairie grasses:
you know when you lay down in the grass and the grass is all around you…and
you’re looking through the grass…when you’re running in the hills, or something,
and then you just get to the top of the hill, or the side, and you lay down, and you
see through the grass.538
And just then she feels compelled to show me the front of a recent brochure she had
made up for a political campaign she was embarking upon for the Métis Nation of
Alberta. The picture on the front is a close-up of her standing in tall prairie grass coming
up to her waist and she is amazed by how much the story of the land continues to unfurl
from the ground up in her life in various articulations, all animated now by Shillinglaw’s
Miriam is drawn into the painting even more closely by the seed bead dew drops
gracing the surface of Shillinglaw’s painted leaves and flower petals. “This is particularly
beautiful,” she says with a smile and gesture towards the mixed-media painting, “it’s like
jewels…it looks like the dew…when the dew is on the flowers, or on the grass, in the
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morning.” Her reference to the morning suddenly began to deepen into other rhythms
she felt unfurling through Shillinglaw’s art. Miriam would often reply to my statements
and questions with stories. She was seldom direct except when speaking about the
injustices she saw all around her everyday perpetrated against Aboriginal peoples,
particularly Métis people and Aboriginal women. Throughout our conversation she
always came back to stories of this ilk, including forays into the persecution of Métis
peoples in Canada; the life and work of Louis Riel; and current stories about denigrated
grave sites and maltreated Aboriginal women in prison. These kinds of issues have
been the story of her life, for she gets routinely discouraged by present-day Canada:
“I’ve been made to feel unwelcome in my own country, and I’ve nowhere to go,” she
states solemnly and with a deep-rooted pain I can feel hanging on her every word. But
then she comes back to Shillinglaw’s art, and it seems to awaken in her a new morning,
bejewelled with dew drops in the sun, as she quotes a line from Riel that became like a
motif in our conversation: “‘My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they
awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.’”
Much more than just a belief, it is an awareness for Miriam that Shillinglaw’s art is
part of a budding movement in Canada that is doing just this kind of work prophesied by
Riel. Furthermore, she pointed out, on numerous occasions, sentiments like how the
history of Métis people is “an integral part of the Canadian history,” and that the issue
surrounding Riel and Métis history is not just for the Métis: “it is a national issue…it is
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part of me, it’s part of you, it’s part of the Canadian psyche…but most Canadians don’t
know anything about that,” she laments. Laviolette included contemporary Aboriginal
artists in her list of third generation nature artists in Alberta for their contribution towards
Miriam would agree that this is part of the story, but as Shillinglaw’s art takes on a life of
its own in her life experience story it also goes way deeper than that. It animates a deep
love for her own ancestors. It also animates and empowers her within her life as what I
pictured as a generous protector. She is devoted to fighting for those who do not have a
voice, or means, or circumstance to fight for themselves. With Shillinglaw’s art breathing
into her the revered words associated with Riel, she can glimpse a more optimistic
outlook for Canada. And she is reassured that she is not alone, for she seems to be
able to feel her own spirit returning to her through Shillinglaw’s art, just as Riel foretold.
It is like a guide inviting her to continue on with her own work for Métis people,
Aboriginal women, and ultimately all Canadians. And I just had the honour of learning
about how Shillinglaw’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed
to story. I got to feel the breath of Shillinglaw’s art taking on a life of its own in Miriam’s
intimacy, tactility, and elementalism of his art noticed by Laviolette is definitely speaking
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to Julie as well, but while this aspect of his art helped draw her in, that is definitely not
the end of the story. Like Von Tiesenhausen, she lives on a large piece of remote land
and spends a lot of time cultivating her relationship to it. She feels “really tuned in to
[her] land,” and is very aware that “it effects [her] and ultimately [she effects] it.” This
was so much so that when she finally encountered Von Tiesenhausen’s work in person
she felt “really ready to find somebody like Peter.” He was like someone walking a
As she sank deeper into her story, she returned to talking about the first work of
his to capture her imagination: his willow Ship (Fig. 21). I could feel the self-confidence
well up within her voice as she elaborated on the story. The artwork animated her with a
relief and encouragement, for it was simple and open-ended enough, she said, that she
“could even create [her] own story about that piece and the land.” And with that, Von
Tiesenhausen’s story took on a life of its own within her life experience story. More than
animating an intimate relationship with the land—this she already had—it invited her
into a new story where, she says, she could be “more certain of speaking my mind.”
“Because of Peter [Von Tiesenhausen]’s art,” she continues, “I began to use my own
voice, to be more clear.” While growing into this story, she has been learning to speak
more intentionally about her own concerns. One of the last things Julie said to me was a
quote from Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral. Julie really felt it important to share, and so
offered it up without my prompting her at all: “you shall create beauty not to excite the
senses, but to give sustenance to the soul.” Von Tiesenhausen’s art has clearly
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provided sustenance for Julie’s soul by helping her find her own voice, rediscover ways
to share her own gift with the world that she clearly cares very deeply for. It seems that,
for her, going inside herself, finding her own voice, and honouring her own feelings and
creativity, is to be more grounded to the earth. It also seems to help her become more
able to observe situations with a motherly compassion, which she exudes in amplitude.
In this way, she is better equipped to reciprocally help provide sustenance to the souls
she encounters in her own way, just like she did for me throughout our conversation.
And I just had the honour of learning about how Von Tiesenhausen’s art matters in the
everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Von
Tiesenhausen’s art taking on a life of its own in Julie’s life story…and now mine…and
now yours.
Whereas for Mana Hill Paquette’s art animated a more intimate relationship with
the natural world than probably any other artist, Diane Stuart feels the opposite. For
Diane, there is not such a strong connection to the land or Alberta unfurling through
Paquette’s art, relative to other artists. From this point of divergence, however, it is
interesting that both Mana Hill and Diane end up stepping into relatively similar stories
nevertheless, with or without the land in their awareness. Diane was immediately
captivated not just by Paquette’s art, but by “the way he was using the art.”540 It greatly
moves her how Paquette makes digital art reproductions from time to time available to
all who want to use them for free through his website. One such artwork, Coming Home,
The painting shows a village of tipis in the snow in the evening. The largest tipi in
the foreground extends almost all the way to the top of the painting and is lit up with a
fire inside. By the firelight, silhouettes of a family can be seen inside the tipi, and just
above it in the evening sky the northern lights dance around the moon in humanoid
shapes reminiscent of a round dance. “He [Paquette] uses the theme of the home, and
inspiration of residential school survivors in it. “It is a striking metaphor,” she continues,
“how people need to return…to some kind of a place of…belonging…and a place in the
world.” She elaborates further by saying that, to her, “it’s such an important part of being
a human being to be able to have some continuity with ancestors.” And it is amazing to
her how Paquette is “able to get across…big concepts, in…[a] very simplistic kind of a
style.”
What I realize as we sink deeper into her story is just how much—as with all art
—the story is less about some objective reflection of the artwork itself, and more an
embodiment of the story within the storyteller’s own life that allows her to be.541 Diane is
residential school survivors returning home to their families, cultures, places, and
ancestors. This is what art historians might say the painting is “about,” which certainly
nature art by dispelling the illusion of a pristine nature outside of history or devoid of
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also really brings it “to life.”542 More than being merely “about” Paquette’s ancestors, the
painting also animates Diane toward awarenesses concerning her own ancestors. She
thinks about their connection with Paquette’s ancestors, and the disconnect she feels
from a history that is necessarily profoundly interwoven with her, though also partly
taken away from her in some way. Despite the great privileges she inherits as a non-
Aboriginal person as a result of the half-histories taught her, it seems she cannot help
but feel an incredible void or emptiness, nevertheless, because un-whole feels un-
whole, no matter what side of the chasm one was born on.
For Diane, Paquette’s art stimulates her awareness of “how disregarded [the
Aboriginal side to the] story is, and all sorts of history that Aboriginal people have not
actually ever been invited to share.” “The more I realize that,” she says, “the more
important I think it is.” “There is something in that particular art that Aaron [Paquette]
does,” she continues, “in the stories…that is very important for modern day people to
hear…the connection to everything, seeing things in a holistic way.” And then she sinks
even deeper: “to rise above…what we’ve been, we have to know what we’ve done and
how it’s not a very good way of progressing.” Paquette’s art, she says, has “made me
think a lot more about how history’s told through the eyes of the dominant society that
has taken charge.” It has animated “a simmering passion” within her to take a stand in
her own, mainly non-Aboriginal, community for “more equality and more understanding
between cultures.” Even though she’s aware that “there’s been people that have been
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working for centuries…to try to get [the Aboriginal] voice heard,” she cannot help but
wonder what’s happening to all this work because she does not see near the amount of
learning, healing, and sharing she might expect after all this time around her. Diane
academics meet,” she continues, but it seems like their discussions are sometimes “so
divorced from…everyday lives.” She feels that art, especially Paquette’s art, can
actually make a difference in bridging the gap between people and cultures, “if people
are encouraged to understand: how does this apply to my life?…how does this relate to
For her own part, Diane has started to take matters into her own hands. With
Paquette’s art as her companion, she has taken it upon herself to try to share it as much
as she can, “to get his art…[and] Aboriginal stories into, you know, places where people
can hear it and see it.” She has, for example, volunteered at a small local museum to
question and challenge what they are doing with their “First Nations Room”: “it’s way
past time,” she states, “that people have a voice and a way to express what the history
was, you know.” She also sidestepped into various stories during our conversation
about myriad exhibition, theatre, and community art event visions (some of them
incredibly elaborate), that she’s had come to her, which would all be facilitated in some
way by Paquette’s art. These would be to help “batter down the [rigidity of the] walls,”
and really help “people understand each other.” Would it not be amazing to explore
having so-called ordinary members of the audience help in the design and staging of an
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art exhibition? She told me, “yes,” and to keep her in mind indeed, with an ecstatic smile
Paquette’s art also has a way of getting “into our heart,” she said, and so after
retiring a few years back she made the commitment to “spend some time…following my
heart.” “The salmon,” she continued, “I’ve always loved the salmon…just the energy that
salmon have,” and so she took it upon herself to build a clay oven at her home in the
shape of a salmon. Diane blew me away with the strength, passion, vision, and action
that Paquette’s art has helped animate within her life experience story. I am not
surprised at all how connected she feels to the salmon and their energy. Like the
salmon, she carries an incredible gift for the world: to acknowledge the importance of
always returning to the place of one’s creation, coming home, no matter the obstacles
and strong river currents working against us. In her own way, she strives to bring events
and cycles to closure. As such, every encounter in her life seems more like a gathering
of wisdom, which can be tapped into in order to instinctively do what is right, no matter
the currents of public opinion, hidden agendas, or manipulation for personal gain. She
seems intuitively aware that wisdom is not something one receives while still and deep
in thought, but that one swims into it by applying inner truths to one’s own life.543 And I
just had the honour of learning about how Paquette’s art matters in the everyday life of
someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Paquette’s art taking on
a life of its own in Diane’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
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The above art experience stories, and the thousands of others always already
going on around us, significantly enrich our story of art in Canada. The ones above
reveal a more complete power inherent in at least the art of Paquette, Shillinglaw,
Flodberg, and Von Tiesenhausen: ways in which it really does live on, breathe, and
animate our world, the Canadian experience, and the essence of our cultural evolution
reciprocally involves equal participation between storyteller, story, listener, and context
of the story encounter. Too often, our story of art in Canada only accounts for the
storyteller and the story, end of story. This is not the whole story. This chapter has
a much larger more-than-human story here, the full story of art in Canada is always
already an indigenously oriented one. It is always already unfurling from the ground up,
and cannot be separated from story listener, nor from the context of the story encounter.
If Canadians are to have a story of art that feels more like “a fit” for everybody—one that
resonates with and empowers us—it is much more likely to unfold in the realm of
concrete everyday life, not the abstract. The power of art—its story—is not primarily in
the ways artists have done something different or unique on their own, nor necessarily
in the messages they alone express in their art, but in how the synergistic entirety of the
storywork process deepens or awakens viewers’ abilities to fully belong to the world.
Without this crucial element, it is difficult for viewers’ lives to avoid being as incomplete,
shallow, and fragmented as the story they are told is animating them. And it is no
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wonder, then, how so many Canadians—ordinary viewers and art historians alike—are
EPILOGUE:
This project has been the first concerted attempt to decolonize the story of art in
Canada—a story that many Canadians, inside and outside the artworld, have been
growing increasingly disenchanted with. I have argued that a significant root of this
disenchantment has been the story’s entrenched Eurocentricity, due in large part to the
disciplinary boundary lines of the art historical tradition, especially its branch of art
criticism. These effectively conceal the actual indigenous orientation and aliveness of art
here. The problem is that when the engine and fuel driving the story are all rooted in
intellectualism that can seem benevolent on the surface, but conceals an arrogance and
story of art in Canada, continually subordinates voices that are equally contributing to
the story, but which it cannot or will not fully pay attention to. Namely, those of people
not directly involved in the artworld, the actively participating more-than-human world
always already encompassing all human activity here, and the indigenous voices that
have long interwoven with and from this place. These voices together demonstrate, in
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other words, what is unfolding through the art process here from the ground up, but
In order to acknowledge, reinvigorate, and open the story of art in Canada back
up to these always already active voices, I re-visited the story from a more cross-
cultural approach, one that I have called a storied approach to art. I developed the
storied approach by drawing from two key works: Jo-ann Archibald’s Indigenous
Storywork, and Arthur Frank’s Letting Stories Breathe. The significant components of
the approach allowed me to: first, recognize art (and our art histories and criticism), as
stories. That is, as living, breathing, open-ended companions that tell us, just as much
as we tell them. In this light, they are to be taken seriously, for there is much more in
play through art than mere entertainment, decoration, escape from “real” life, or nice
things on the periphery of our lives that we may or may not need. Second and third,
they allowed me to recognize art as performative and always working holistically with
things. Stories act, and not just with or through storytellers’ minds or artworks alone, but
through places, things, viewers, and other stories. They are embodied by bodies,
materialized in the act of telling (whether by a human or non-human voice), and take on
a life of their own in the shifting, breathing, and animate more-than-human world. While
the conventional story of art in Canada largely privileges artists and their artworks in the
story, the storied approach acknowledges stories’ aliveness by also accounting for
viewers, and the context of the story encounter within the process as well.
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that was not beholden to the conventional Eurocentric approaches and thoughts that
are largely about art, or trying to explain it. It acknowledges it instead from the ground
up, as a living thing, in a way that is more interested in speaking with it, and allowing it
to do what it can do. Because of this, major concerns, points, and influences stemming
from abstract European sources are discussed, valid, and still able to be recognized as
important parts of the story, they just do not dominate it, control it, or shape it in any kind
of privileged way. In order to further develop and deepen into the storied approach, I
also drew heavily from the work of David Abram, especially his Becoming Animal. This
enabled me to explain more clearly the extent to which a perceived separation from the
animate earth, everywhere embedded within the disciplinary boundary lines of art
history, is a significant, if not the significant, veil obscuring our art historical conversation
around art in Canada. When this veil is pulled back, the indigenous orientation of art,
and the storied approach to it—both always already rooted here—become much more
Re-envisioning the story of art in Canada from a storied approach entailed two
main steps. First, I identified three key points in the story—moments that have been
generally acknowledged by art historians as central points of reference for the story of
art as we know it—and re-visited them with the above components in mind. The three
points of reference were: (1) the art of Lucius O’Brien around the time of confederation
and birth of a more self-aware artworld in Canada; (2) the art of Tom Thomson and the
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Group of Seven; and (3) the art of Paul-Émile Borduas and the official turn towards
abstraction and internationalism in the Canadian artworld. Bringing the storied approach
to bear on these points of our conventional story allowed us to unlearn major aspects of
the conventional story that were so entrenched in Eurocentricity that they concealed
aspects of lived experience here. This, then, cleared a space for us to relearn aspects
of those same stories as they have been always already unfurling from the ground up
here. Engaging in this first step of the research project demonstrated the extent to which
it is Eurocentric thoughts, words, and actions that are nested within the larger story of
here—as manifested through the animate earth and Indigenous voices long breathing
and sustaining it—not the other way around, as it is so often implied and assumed by
our conventional story. A concealed indigenous orientation of the story of art in Canada
was revealed.
The second step of the research project involved opening up aspects of the story
of art as we know it today even more: to the voices of viewers of art and contexts of art
encounters as well. Doing so revealed the extent to which the story of art in Canada is,
animating us from the ground up, according to our carnal immersions in it. It is more
than just the fixed and Eurocentric explanations of art we read in art history books. I
included viewer voices in the project by conducting fourteen interviews with people who
have been touched, moved, or inspired by art, in order to gather their art experience
Chris Flodberg, Aaron Paquette, and Peter von Tiesenhausen—to help put me in
contact with project participants. In this way, it was demonstrated how the re-envisioned
story of art in Canada does respectfully acknowledge, even empower, the aliveness of
art, all peoples, and the animate earth encompassing us, here, just as it always has, in
stormed, cooled, burned, eroded, swam, flew, blossomed, sang, fought, dreamt,
and loved. Over time, these ongoing rhythms unfurled again and again in new
little bit the same. They eventually gestured towards, pulled, animated, then
creatures always remembered their integral part in and contribution to this great
emergence of real life, and told and retold it in various ways so their children and
grandchildren would never forget. Some other two-legged creatures, for their own
important reasons and contributions, grew to forget about the sensuous fullness
of their lives within their original home. These two-leggeds, mainly from Europe,
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started to move more freely around the world and some came to Canada. They
nevertheless, were valuable, sought after, and helpful. Many others supported
and encouraged their destructive and crippling effects, but something else
intact and unfurling through the animate earth and the stories it always animated
here, began to pull at and enlarge their bodies and imaginations once again. It
encompassed and provoked their awarenesses, which now included such human
with their more-than-human world once again, which could never be completely
This gradual reawakening moved as sure as the shallow, rocky soil in the
East Coast air that cycles in the deep and gushes with an offering from the
surfacing whales. The ever unfurling and encompassing stories of here began to
within them. They animated more stories, and more stories, and those continued
to animate even more yet. Some unfolded in the shape of particular kinds of
cities. Some in the shape of particular kinds of governments. Some in the shape
where the whole answer is not in the story, but in that there is a story.
course, still retained much of their old forgetfulness, which breathed life as well
into stories that took shape as new fears, new illusions of separation, and new
rules and controls that worked counter to much of the life here. Sometimes new
technologies, new knowledges, and even a new culture now called the Métis
people were also instigated, ushering in a new kind of hope and possibility. Either
way, the larger story these were all already nested within was unrelenting,
immense, and strong. Its downward pull continued to work and erode away at the
forgetfulness, yearning to thrive again in unison with all creatures’ souls, and ever
shifting and breathing life into new articulations of balance and aliveness
storied more learning, and beauty animated beauty. Creatures and new carnal
connections continued to sink and paint and perform with/in this larger story
and more with the deepening rhythms of each new generation. And the stories of
began to sound more and more like those of the ones who continued to
remember. The larger story encompassing them all together continued to unfurl
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and breathe and share its balance and aliveness in the ongoing co-emergence of
The stories waiting to have life breathed into them in the shape of
Canadian visual art everywhere also took on a life of their own through the
synergy created between the story, storyteller, listener, and the larger story
encompassing them all. For a while, the stories of one particular type of listener
them all. This craft too, however, is rooted primarily in the old forgetfulness.
Given its inherent shortcomings due to its displaced position within a new, larger
story here, it also started to become eroded, just as sure as the receding glaciers
bite into the limestones and shales of the Canadian Rockies. As a result, other
voices, ears, minds, and hearts are opening up everyday to the real fullness and
aliveness of the stories that animate them. They are also opening up to the
power and responsibility that comes with sharing them, as well as to listening to
Aboriginal art has always been a significant part of what we now call Canada. Today, it
of Aboriginal art, but these purchasers are not necessarily buying the art merely
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experience stories below, there is often more emotion, thought, physical influence, and
even spiritual connection involved in the purchase, even if not a complete culturally
respected, and popular in mainstream Canada—so much so that, as John Ralston Saul
will be helpful now to account for Aboriginal art more directly within the context of this
project.
Aboriginal art, the original articulations of the storied life emerging from the
ground up here, is that unfurling rhythm within which all subsequent art and story in
Canada is nested. It is for this reason that contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art is
respondents agreed that there is “a great deal” for Canadians “to learn from Aboriginal
heritage, culture, and the unique relationship between Aboriginal Peoples and the
demonstrates that the relationships formed and knowledges shared resonate with
Aboriginal Canadians within their own stories and contexts form a significant and
unfolding political dynamic. Within its more “natural context,” contemporary Canadian
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Aboriginal art helps to enrich, respectfully and reciprocally, Canadians’ lives with a
interconnectedness through, Aboriginal art. Those who were not so drawn to it,
generally recognized its powerful aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual depth, nevertheless.
They just felt that on one level, usually a cultural level, they could not relate. This
going on, on one hand, and a kind of distance, on the other—indicates to me that: (1)
there is an incredible downward pull being experienced and yearned for at the moment;
yet (2) we are still in the middle of figuring out how to share across cultural and
ecological edges in a positive way that enriches and promotes Canada’s social-
ecological diversity and resilience instead of destroying it. While more and more
contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art that they are nested within neutralizes the force
artwork that has generated much social-political reverence, power, and authority is The
Spirit of Haida Gwaii, by Haida artist Bill Reid. Reid (1920–1998) was a carver and
goldsmith who, inspired by the art of his great-great-uncle Charles Edenshaw (1839–
1920), combined Haida traditions with European jewelry techniques to make his own
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sharing in Canada.
The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, installed in the courtyard of the Canadian Embassy in
Washington, DC, tells the story of thirteen travellers—animal and human from Haida
consciousness dictated to his wife, Martine. Right from the beginning, Reid made no
provision for an “answer,” or meaning, contained in the work alone: “Here we are at last,
a long way from Haida Gwaii, not too sure where we are or where we’re going, still
squabbling or vying for position within the boat, but somehow managing to appear to be
aspects of their relationship to the land of Haida Gwaii, as well as to each other and the
Haida people. In the end, Reid returns to the use of the inclusive pronouns we and us
when concluding with still more uncertainty: “Is the tall figure who may or may not be the
Spirit of Haida Gwaii leading us, for we are all in the same boat, to a sheltered beach
beyond the rim of the world as he seems to be, or is he lost in a dream of his own
dreamings?”551
It is telling that Reid includes all Canadian viewers—us, we—in this multi-species
boat from Haida Gwaii. The storywork relationship, including the viewers and their
contexts, guides the viewer into a profound relationship with Haida Gwaii: its people,
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land, and ecosystems. The sharing and partnership forged here is not always easy—
some of the characters in the boat interact through an embrace (Bear Mother and her
children), others in a quarrel (the Wolf and the Eagle)—but it is a partnership shaped by
a distinct Aboriginal way of knowing about equality, mutual respect, and mutual
context.
This is the kind of relationship that many sustainable development and business
commentators in Canada have increasingly been seeking. David Lertzman and Harrie
Vredenburg, from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, argue
that “global sustainable development will not be achieved in a cultural vacuum. In the
sustainable development.”552
Around Haida Gwaii and along BC’s west coast are found many examples of
failed government policy and unethical industrial practices for resource extraction.553 It
is not difficult to find examples of this in other provinces as well. Mark Lightner, a retired
geologist and executive in the oil industry from Calgary is a collector of Flodberg’s art,
as well as of Aboriginal art. In his art experience story, he told me that while employed in
the oil industry he became very aware of environmental issues and that he felt
within an established structure driven by growth and profit, and many of the policies and
entitlement—to feel that, in carrying out their work, they are simply “being responsible.”
Mark’s experience suggests that while conscience and hindsight may lead one to
question the ethical grounds of one’s activities, the corporate structure tends to demand
that one repress these thoughts and dampens any inclination an employee might have
to challenge that structure as a respected and engaged citizen. The storywork inherent
For Mark, Aboriginal and landscape art (like Flodberg’s)—both of which find
prominent places in his home side by side—mesh with his own experience, making him
aware of his surroundings in a more reciprocal and holistic way. Referring to the
Canadian Aboriginal and landscape art in his living room, he remarked that when he
looks at the images, he thinks, “You know it’s so peaceful, it’s so uncontaminated,
there’s no buildings, there’s no people . . . it’s serene.” He went on to contrast this purity
with the modern environment: “You go walking around town and you see garbage all
over the place, and run-down buildings, and . . . yeah, it affects me, subconsciously, and
gradually you become more and more aware that people, houses, buildings, roads are
taking over the world and leaving fewer and fewer pristine places.”554 When Mark walks
the streets of Calgary, the sense of ecological harmony he finds in his contemporary art
collection is thrown into relief by the seemingly rampant disrespect surrounding him.
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The stories expressed in his art collection take on a life of their own: they become
based in Aboriginal storytelling traditions unfurling from the ground up, that embodies a
mainstream industrial and political structures. This solution is related to principles like
in an expression of themselves as interrelated with the land and the other beings that
share it. This sustains the life and importance of a storied life for contemporary Canada.
As we have seen, a sharing of knowledge through the arts has always been
integral to the resilience of Canada. Today, the process is being adapted by artists to
confront the colonial attitudes and behaviours that have contributed to many of the
process of learning from each other, interacting with mutual respect and adaptation, and
maintaining balanced relationships with the surrounding world from the ground up.
The Spirit of Haida Gwaii was one of Reid’s crowning works in a long career, life,
and learning process largely concerned with this theme of reciprocity and balance. The
importance of this can be traced through Reid’s lifelong work on an essay he called
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“Haida Means Human Being.” In 1979, while confined to a Vancouver hospital, Reid
began this essay, which he revised several times throughout his life: it explored the
question “What is a human being?” For Reid, becoming human beings was a creative
act where “we first had to invent ourselves.” This self-invention is more effectively
[artistic/creative] skills was denied to no one.” Reid argues that over the course of
Canadian history, some people became less human by turning their attention away from
supporting this kind of creativity and toward the taking away or destruction of this basic
creative ability in others around them. In the end, he envisions a time when Canadians
will be “neither displaced aborigines nor immigrant settlers,” but will realize how
to our homeland and the world around us. This is a theme that fuels his courageous,
vulnerable, and powerful conclusion: “In the Haida language, Haida means human
being…I wish for each of us, native or newcomer—or, as so many of us are now, both—
and the more-than-human world immediately around them. In The Spirit of Haida Gwaii,
not only is everyone equal or “in the same boat,” but the “boat goes on, forever
anchored in the same place” (my emphasis).556 The storywork of this sculpture
ultimately expresses a political statement that reverses the process that destroyed the
creative ability for humans to invent themselves in relation to here. It subtly works to
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rebuild the necessary relationships for a balanced life in Canada. It reinstates Aboriginal
knowledges and practices as crucial contributions to the sustenance of life in this place,
partnership.
purchased by non-Aboriginal collectors. Over time, the motives behind the collecting of
Aboriginal art have changed. There is frequently much more emotion, thought, even
spiritual connection in such transactions than in the past. Whatever their initial reasons,
collectors have the advantageous position of being able to “hear” the story again and
again as they view their works day after day. Each time they do, the story unfolds, from
the ground up, in a different context, taking on a life of its own. It presents different
layers of meaning within their life experience stories and in the Canadian public sphere,
encounter with contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art can be at work even for people
In another art experience story shared with me, Leo Campari, the son of Italian
immigrants, and who was greatly moved by the work of Heather Shillinglaw, began
discussing his experiences with her art in the context of his own background and
upbringing. He told me that when he and his siblings were growing up in industrial
Ontario, they felt little connection either with their Italian heritage or with the land.
Cultural and ecological considerations took a back seat to just living and working. Leo
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later moved to Alberta and encountered Shillinglaw’s art at the same time he discovered
the prairie landscape. Her art “confronted him,” he said, with something he was not
used to in his day-to-day life—an acknowledged connection with the land. It also helped
him make sense of his new surroundings and inspired him to think more about his own
relationship to the land. He went on to say that Shillinglaw’s art and its stories keep
appearing for him in unexpected ways as he grows with and learns about Alberta as
“home.” He is inspired “to connect all the time with the creative process” in his own
work. Shillinglaw’s art has also helped him to grow more aware and proud of his own
Italian heritage.557
In a similar way, when Reid envisions a time when all people “in the same boat…
forever anchored in the same place,” Canada, can call themselves “Haida,” a paradox
fear in many relationships with “others.” Rather, the self becomes clearer, as an integral
contributing member to the diversity of the world around.558 The storywork inherent in
participants, whatever their background, are rooted, nested, in the “natural context.”
This dissolves the validity of what Youngblood Henderson has called the “artificial
context” often limiting the Canadian political system and, I add, the discipline of
Canadian art history. It clears space for an equal partnership to be expressed and
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affirmed. Leo’s story demonstrates that his deepening relationship with the land in
Alberta through Shillinglaw’s art also helped him deepen his relationship to Italy.
equal partnership with Aboriginal knowledges in Canada, it too can enrich local society,
Paquette’s have given, and give, Aboriginal people an important voice within Canada.559
animate earth, and an intercultural society lies at the heart of the (political)
not only visualizes aspects of this consciousness for others but also communicates it, or
performs it, with others. It does not just import ideas from political science, but also
generates subtle political resistance from the ground up through the practice of
In a still strongly colonial society like Canada, one contributing system tends to
overwhelm or dominate others, and benefits generally tend to flow top-down in one
direction through rigid borders between different cultures.560 The storywork process in
contemporary Aboriginal visual art actively engages viewers in the experience of living
in a Canada in which this structure has been neutralized. The principles of holism,
adaptation, unlike experiences that may emerge in the political, institutional, and
This rich form of sharing harks back not only to the original Indigenous
knowledges concerning living in this place but also to modern lessons about “the real
sharing that involves more than just an intellectual somersault or a linear relationship
between artist, artwork, and viewer. Active participants in this contemporary Aboriginal
art process reciprocally perform together what Ralston Saul has called “a philosophy of
between different people, cultures, and communities can enhance the collective
relationship that is based on, in political scientist Michael Murphy’s words: “equality . . .
an equal right to exercise choices and make decisions that for too long have been the
state.”563 With all other art and story in Canada necessarily nested within this always
already unfurling larger story from here, Aboriginal art is always already working to
neutralize the dominance of imported art practices, theories, and styles, which are
largely privileged and emphasized by the discipline of art history. It animates the always
One major area of research that this project opens up is that concerned with the
indigenous orientation, or storied work, of other artists in Canada beyond O’Brien, the
Group, and Borduas. The richness these artists have already provided the conventional
story of art makes them great partners in dialogue, but there are, of course, many other
with important stories to tell from here. All humans have an indigenous soul and so are
always already in ongoing conversation with the animate earth and more-than-human
world, whether they know it or not. Allan Edson’s Fond de Bois (1870); James Duncan’s
Falls Near Lake St. John, Canada East (c.1850-60); Otto Jacobi’s Falls of Ste Anne,
Quebec (1865); Robert S. Duncanson’s A Wet Morning on the Chaudière Falls (1868);
or Daniel Fowler’s Fallen Birch (1886), for example, are other works that tap into an
earth narrative similar to O’Brien's, and according to their own carnal immersions within
That there are many other artists and works to look at in this way demonstrates
the extent to which the privileged place European methods and ideas have in the story
of art in Canada can be relaxed, made more social-ecologically balanced, and more
cross-cultural. Many artists indeed flocked to Europe and European art trainers,
particularly in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. But this does not necessarily
mean these top-down transplantations wholly dictated the direction of art and the way
Canadian artists and their viewers, in turn, “saw” their places here. For example, Harper
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emphasized that, particularly through the popularity of Otto Jacobi, Adolphe Vogt,
Bierstadt, and William Raphael (in the wake of Cornelius Krieghoff), “The German
influence was thus very real in Canada.”564 Similarly, Marmaduke Matthews, despite
living well over half his life in Canada, is summarized by Harper as “[remaining] English
to the very core.”565 Even more telling, Horatio Walker and Homer Watson, despite
being born, raised, and performatively encountering the unfurling rhythms of the earth
here from birth, like O’Brien, are primarily recognized as the “greatest Canadian
awareness of what was happening in the United States, England, and Germany [and a
little later, France, and Japan].”567 They are less recognized for being participants in an
already unfolding story encompassing them from the ground up. The indigenously
with them, through the performative practice of art, is frequently undermined. Even
when “‘Canadian’ qualities...such that one would not readily feel that they were by
painters of any other country,” do emerge in the story of art, this is often explained away
by emphasizing a social narrative such as: imported Romantic ideologies, “‘to please
the public,’” or to “‘become rich fast.’”568 Frequently, little to no consideration for the
these other participants in the story of art here is given. As a result, Canadian artists’
places, and the myriad animal bodies contingent upon them in the ongoing emergence
of the real, are often relegated to landscape as “subject matter”: a separate dimension
outside oneself that can be observed, responded to, and represented, but seldom
Other instances within the conventional story of art in Canada that are ripe to be
re-visited in this way now include, for example, the perceived break between the
Group’s art and contemporary figurative and abstract artists, such as John Lyman and
Bertram Brooker. This is part of the story, but not the whole story. Art historian Adam
Lauder says of Brooker, sometimes called Canada’s first abstractionist, that his art
speaks “to a counter-tradition [to the Group’s unpopulated landscape art, by taking]…
the figure, and in particular, the sensory capacities of the body as its principle
subject.”569 From within the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines Lauder is working in,
this does seem like The Truth. These same boundary lines, however, conceal that
“sensory capacities of the body” are always already interwoven with and actively
participating in the flesh of the world, the unfurling rhythms of the animate earth
From a storied approach, then, I suggest that Brooker’s art is less a complete
break, and more another deepening articulation of the same ever-unfurling story
engaged by the Group, but now according to Brooker’s carnal immersion within it.
Similarly, the return to landscape art, and representation in the 1980s, after Borduas
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and abstraction rendered it seemingly irrelevant, may also share rhythms with this same
story. It can now be explored as another articulation of the indigenously oriented story
unfurling from the ground up here. The flowering of “contemporary” Aboriginal art itself,
in the 1970s through the later twentieth century, can be re-storied in this same way. It is,
oriented story of here, according to changing carnal immersions within it, and less the
effect of a one-way, top-down influence from European art theories and styles on
Aboriginal peoples.
conversation about and with art in Canada to other voices than just the art historian’s or
critic’s. Including more viewer art experience stories within our tellings of the story of art
in Canada will allow for a much more respectful, holistic, diverse, enriched, and resilient
story. Such a story will be a more empowering one that can better “fit,” animate, and
instigate Canadians. It can give us a story that is more alive to grow, step, live, and
breathe into, rather than one that might feel deadened or incomplete in its pressure
A related future direction for research, then, entails the extent to which art in
Canada, as the place-based indigenously oriented story it is, might be re-storied in our
everyday lives. From a storied approach, we can better see how much our art is to be
taken seriously: as actually educating our spirits, hearts, minds, and bodies in ways to
even knowing it. More awareness and research pertaining to the storywork—the
significant benefits in the overall health, well-being, and resilience of Canada and
Canadians. Government policies around the arts could better account for such benefits
while budgeting, so that arts programs are not always the least funded or valued within
the fabric of society as a whole. The way we teach and approach art and the history of
this place and its peoples would also be greatly enriched and enhanced. Educators and
curriculum designers will not need to reinforce the top-down, abstracted hierarchy in
schools by treating arts courses as just an “option” that is less relevant to life than, say,
sciences or languages. To extend this direction even further, this would significantly
improve the level and quality of Aboriginal education in Canada. Aboriginal students
already have the system working and stacked against them for various complex
reasons. The emphasis placed on reading, writing, and concrete memorizing in school
curriculums and learning methods exacerbates these odds considerably. Taking arts
and story seriously in the everyday lives of Canadians will open up new creative ways to
teach, inspire, and empower in a way that is much more cross-culturally respectful and
equal.
Finally, this project points to future directions for art historical research regarding
the increasing concern for decolonizing the story of art in Canada. Not only does this
begin newly performing it with more cross-cultural and ecological respect and
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awareness. While certainly not the final word, of course, this story will at least animate
others and take on a life of its own in a decolonizing movement not to eradicate
European ideologies or practices, but to rebalance and enhance the pools of knowledge
—of which our art is a significant part—from which we all have to draw for the social-
Among other aspects, for example, this story opens new insight onto issues of
oriented, even for non-Aboriginal artists, say, when might cultural appropriation actually
story of art, far from being just a nice little story about art, is to be taken seriously for its
power over how we imagine ourselves in our places, and live in the larger story always
encompassing us wherever we are. I would love to see more research being conducted
on how shifts and movements in artist’s careers and the story of art in Canada, which
have long been assumed the primary result of top-down European influence and power,
might actually be a more nuanced co-emergence of the real unfolding just as much, if
not more so, from the earth here. Moreover, this process does not simply involve the
earth as a passive backdrop that artists respond to, use, or are unilaterally inspired by.
Rather, it is one where the earth is an active agent quite literally and reciprocally using,
animating, and instigating the artist within the larger story they are already nested
within. The more multivocal, reciprocal, and place-based our pool of stories of art can
be, the more they will be able to help breathe and embody aliveness here.
ENDNOTES 423
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16“Bridging Art and Audience: Storytelling in the Presence of Historical Canadian Art,” presented at
Unspoken Assumptions: Visual Art Curators in Context, 16 July 2005, Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta;
available online from: http://curatorsincontext.ca/transcripts/hudson%20thomas.pdf, 6.
17 Ibid., 6 and 19, respectively.
18 Ibid., 19.
19 Ibid., 2 and 6-7, respectively.
20 Ibid., 7.
21
Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2010), 111.
22“The Disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and Empowerment Through Their
Writing,” in An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, 3rd ed., eds. Daniel David Moses and
Terry Goldie (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005), 245.
23
Taking Back our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing (Winnipeg: University of
Manitoba Press, 2009), 7.
24 See Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 41.
25See Tim Fulford and Kevin Hutchings, eds. Native Americans and Anglo-American Culture, 1750-1850:
The Indian Atlantic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1-38.
26While the Indian Atlantic as Fulford and Hutchings describe it flatlined around the middle of the
nineteenth century, as colonial power became more and more domineering, it would be a mistake to
assume, then, that this also signaled the end of cross-cultural influence and exchange between Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian artworld. Recent art historical works demonstrate that this is
not the case, even if it only occurred amidst a much more politically insidious context. See, for example,
Ruth B. Phillips’s “Nuns, Ladies, and the ‘Queen of the Huron’: Appropriating the Savage in Nineteenth-
Century Huron Tourist Art,” in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds,
ed. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 33-50;
Virginia G. Berry, Taming the Frontier: Art and Women in the Canadian West, 1880-1920 (Calgary and
Winnipeg: Bayeux Arts and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2005); Frances W. Kaye, Hiding the Audience:
Viewing Arts and Arts Institutions on the Prairies (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2003); and
Leslie Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 2006).
27 Fulford and Hutchings, Native Americans, 18.
28
Anne Whitelaw, “Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Canada,” Canadian Journal of
Communication 31.1 (2006): 212.
29 Ibid.
30David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
(New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 28.
ENDNOTES 425
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31Ruth B. Phillips, “Aboriginal Modernities: First Nations Art, c. 1880-1970,” in The Visual Arts in Canada:
The Twentieth Century, ed. Anne Whitelaw, Brian Foss, and Sandra Paikowsky (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 349.
32 Ibid., 350.
33 Ibid., 349.
34
See, for example, Marie Battiste, ed., Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver and Toronto:
UBC Press, 2000).
35Marilyn J. McKay, Picturing the Land: Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 4.
36 Ibid.
37 Cross-Cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), 241.
38W.J.T. Mitchell, ed. Landscape and Power, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1-2.
McKay actually misquotes Mitchell on more than one occasion, this being one of them: McKay quotes the
concept as “cultural practice,” not the correct “cultural medium.” See, McKay, Picturing the Land, 4.
39 Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 253.
40 Ibid., 244-45.
41 McKay, Picturing the Land, 92.
42 Ibid., 95 and 99, respectively.
43Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1968), also quoted in David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous:
Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 66.
44 David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 173.
45 Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976), 7.
46 Kainai artist, Joane Cardinal-Schubert’s, important travelling exhibition of Aboriginal art, opened
posthumously 5 November 2011 at the Royal Alberta Museum, is called “Narrative Quest,” and directly
concerns the link between Aboriginal art and story. Métis artist, Aaron Paquette, has also characterized
this link in his personal blog, stating one of his art’s motivating principles of “sharing what [he’s] gleaned
after twenty years of art making” because, in his words, “we're all in this crazy experiment together.” See,
Aaron Paquette, “HBC—Half Breed Clothing,” The Art of Aaron Paquette, weblog, 11 September 2009,
available from: http://aaronpaquette.blogspot.com.
47Dale Auger, Medicine Paint: The Art of Dale Auger, with foreword by Mary-Beth Laviolette (Vancouver:
Heritage House Publishing, 2009), 7.
48Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 14; and quoting Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-
Body Medicine (New York: Norton, 2008), 24.
ENDNOTES 426
______________________________________________________________________
49Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2009), 75.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 161.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., 162.
54 Ibid., 165.
55Anne Newlands, Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly
Books, 2007), 24.
56This description about exploring how stories can do what they can do is a borrowed description used to
discuss the task of socio-narratology (described further below), by Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 17.
57James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, “Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal Thought,” in Reclaiming
Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), 266.
58 Letting Stories Breathe, 39.
59 Episkenew, Taking Back our Spirits, 71.
60Leslie Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 32.
61See David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff, Contemporary Canadian Art (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, with
The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), 13-24.
62 Abstract Painting in Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007), 10, 15, respectively.
63For an expression of this bewildering disconnect between art historians and the public, see, for
example, Peter White, “Out of the Woods,” in Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian
Identity, and Contemporary Art, eds. John O’Brian and Peter White (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2007), 11-13.
64Steven M. Leuthold, Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity (Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1998), 46.
65 See ibid., 56-58.
66 Ibid., 6.
67 Ibid., 7-8.
68 Ibid., 3.
69 See Gombrich, The Essential Gombrich (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 7.
ENDNOTES 427
______________________________________________________________________
91 Ibid., 96.
92 Quoted in Lacroix, “Writing Art History,” 417.
93 R.H. Hubbard, ed. An Anthology of Canadian Art (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960), 9.
94 Quoted in Lacroix, “Writing Art History,” 417.
95
See “Canadian Culture and Ethnic Diversity,” in Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples, ed. Paul Robert
Magocsi, 304-316 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 312-13.
96 My translation. Gérard Morisset, Rapport de l’inventaire des oeuvres d’art (Québec: Ministère des
Affaires Municipales, de l’Industrie et du Commerce, 1940), 26. The full untranslated passage is: “Les
livres des comptes ne contiennent pas que des mentions sur nos artisans…[alors] nous touchons ici du
doigt une préoccupation nouvelle: la mise en valeur de notre passé artistique au point de vue national.”
97My translation. Gérard Morisset, Québec et son évolution (Québec: Société Historique de Québec,
Université Laval, 1952), 6. The full untranslated passage is: “...résister efficacement à l’ennemi, que ce
soit l’Anglais ou l’Iroquois.”
98See, Lee-Ann Martin, “Contemporary First Nations Art Since 1970: Individual Practices and Collective
Activism,” in The Visual Arts in Canada, 378.
99See, for example, Joan Murray, The Best Contemporary Canadian Art (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers,
1987). Murray states that Aboriginal artworks “do not influence, and are not influenced by, most of the
artists this book features,” and, therefore, need “to be treated separately, as they often are, because of
their different cultural background and objectives” (viii).
100David Bringhurst, Geoffrey James, Russell Keziere, and Doris Shadbolt, eds. Visions: Contemporary
Art in Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, and the Ontario Educational Communications Authority,
1983), 9.
101See Laurie Meijer Drees, “White Paper/Red Paper: Aboriginal Contributions to Canadian Politics and
Government,” in Hidden in Plain Sight: Contributions of Aboriginal Peoples to Canadian Identity and
Culture, vol. 2, eds. Cora J. Voyageur, David R. Newhouse, and Dan Beavon, 282-299 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2011), 288-89.
102 Martin, “Contemporary First Nations Art,” 383.
103 Lacroix, “Writing Art History,” 422.
105See, for example, Newlands, Canadian Paintings, 328, for Vera within an inclusivity framework; Reid,
Concise History, 195-96, for Cloud, Vera, and Dhârâna within an isolated culture framework; and McKay,
Picturing the Land, 189, for Cloud within a postcolonial critical framework.
106See, for example, Ann Davis, The Logic of Ecstasy: Canadian Mystical Painting, 1920-1940 (Toronto :
University of Toronto Press, 1992), 132-35.
107 See, for example, Reid, Concise History, 195-96.
108 Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 122.
109There are only four other people Frank mentions only slightly more often than Archibald regarding
stories in his entire book: philosopher and art theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin; and storytellers, Leo Tolstoy,
Frederick Douglass, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
110Jo-ann Archibald, Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (Vancouver and
Toronto: UBC Press, 2008), 3 and 2, respectively.
111 Ibid., 3 and 12, respectively.
112 Ibid., 2.
113 Ibid., 96-98.
114 Ibid., 76.
115 Ibid., 149 and 100, respectively.
116
Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2010), 28, 2, and 3, respectively.
117 Ibid., 20-21.
118 Ibid., 25.
119 Ibid., 28.
120 David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 10 nΩ.
121
Alan Paskow, The Paradoxes of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 160.
122 Ibid., 161 and 168, respectively.
123 Ibid., 162.
124 See, ibid., 159.
125 Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 86.
126 Ibid., 104.
ENDNOTES 430
______________________________________________________________________
137Ibid., 40. See also Gerald McMaster, “Object (to) Sanctity: The Politics of the Object,” International
Journal of Canadian Studies 12 (Fall 1995): 12-13.
138 Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 126-27.
139Barbara Bolt, Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image (London and New
York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2004), 11.
140 Ibid., 12-13.
141 Ibid., 14.
142 Ibid., 120.
143 Ibid., 123.
144 Ibid., 123 and 124, respectively.
145 Ibid., 124.
146See respectively, for example, Donald W. Buchanan, Canadian Painters: From Paul Kane to the Group
of Seven (Oxford and London: Phaidon Press, 1945), 7-8; and J. Russell Harper, Paul Kane’s Frontier
(Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971), 44.
147 Bolt, Art Beyond Representation, 129.
148 Ibid., 146.
149Ibid., 186. For an example of this within North America, many Aboriginal basket-makers talk about
singing particular songs as an integral part of plant harvesting for, and in the making of baskets. They
might refer to a “basket [as] a song made visible” (Tom Hill and Richard W. Hill, Sr., eds. Creation’s
Journey: Native American Identity and Belief [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press and the
National Museum of the American Indian, 1994], 133.) Thank you to Gerald McMaster for bringing this to
my attention.
150 Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 124-25.
151 Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 58-59.
152Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence, with foreword by Leroy Little Bear
(Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 86.
153 Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 11-12.
154Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology, with foreword by Jim Harrison
(Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2006), 32.
155 See, ibid., 252.
156 Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 2.
ENDNOTES 432
______________________________________________________________________
208For more on O’Brien and picturesque ideals, see, for example, William Colgate, Canadian Art: Its
Origin and Development (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1943), 38-40, 175-77; For O’Brien and romanticism,
see, for example, Anne Newlands, Canadian Art: From its Beginnings to 2000 (Willowdale, ON: Firefly
Books, 2000), 237. For O’Brien and Barbizon School ideals, see, for example, Ken Lefolii, et al., eds.
Great Canadian Painting: A Century of Art (Toronto: Canadian Centennial Publishing Company, 1966),
32-33. For O’Brien and his relation to British aesthetic standards or Pre-Raphaelite ideals, see, for
example, Albert H. Robson, Canadian Landscape Painters (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1932), 47-67; and
Dennis Reid, “Our Own Country Canada”: Being an Account of the National Aspirations of the Principal
Landscape Artists in Montreal and Toronto, 1869-1890 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1979),
228-30. For O’Brien and Luminism, see, for example, Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian
Painting, 2nd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1988), 86-87; and Sandra Paikowsky,
“Canadian Painting,” in Profiles of Canada, 3rd ed., eds. Kenneth G. Pryke and Walter C. Soderlund
(Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2003), 495-96.
209 See Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 29 and 16.
210 See ibid., 31.
211 See Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 41.
212
See Anne Newlands, Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books,
2007), 232.
213 See, respectively, ibid., 232; Colgate, Canadian Art, 30 ; and Harper, Painting in Canada, 185.
214 See McKay, Picturing the Land, 13, 6-7, and 155-57.
215 Becoming Animal, 94.
216Samuel Thompson, Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the Last Fifty Years: An Autobiography
(Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Company, 1884), 186. Thompson visited The Woods in 1833 after arriving from
England to take up land nearby around Barrie.
217 When O’Brien was not much more than a newborn baby (1933), he was with his mother on three
shorter visits to Thornhill, Vaughan Township, north of York (Toronto), during the illness of her mother,
Mrs. Gapper, and then illness and subsequent death of her brother, who both resided in Thornhill. The
following winter, the O’Briens spent the entire winter in Thornhill to care again for Mrs. Gapper through
her illness. In the spring of 1835, there was a very quick return trip to Thornhill to get O’Brien’s new sister
baptized, and then later that autumn, O’Brien and his older brother were taken down to Thornhill again to
spend a few months with their aunt. In subsequent years the O’Briens just returned to Thornhill, at least
once a year, on various shorter family visits. See Mary O’Brien, The Journals of Mary O’Brien, 1828-1838,
ed. Audrey Saunders Miller (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968), 203-207, 218, 236, 244, 260, 261-62,
and 267.
218 Abram, Becoming Animal, 270.
219David O. Evans, Kenneth H. Nicholls, Yvonne C. Allen, and Michael J. McMurtry, “Historical Land Use,
Phosphorus Loading, and Loss of Fish Habitat in Lake Simcoe, Canada,” Canadian Journal of Fisheries
and Aquatic Sciences 53.S1 (1996): 196.
ENDNOTES 436
______________________________________________________________________
220
Anonymous, “The Fishing Tourist,” The Canadian Monthly and National Review 4.4 (October 1873):
273.
221See Lawrence J. Jackson, Christopher Ellis, Alan V. Morgan, and John H. McAndrews, “Glacial Lake
Levels and Eastern Great Lakes Palaeo-Indians,” Geoarcheology: An International Journal 15.5 (2000):
415-40.
222William Elsey Connelley, Indian Myths, illus. William Wallace Clarke (New York and Chicago: Rand
McNally & Company, 1928). Elsey Connelley was an adopted member of the Wyandot Nation and given
official permission to publish these stories and history.
223See A. A. Reznicek, “Association of Relict Prairie Flora with Indian Trails in Central Ontario,” in
Proceedings of the Eighth North American Prairie Conference, ed. Richard Brewer (Kalamazoo, MI:
Western Michigan University, 1983), 33-39.
224See Suzanne Needs-Howarth and Stephen Cox Thomas, “Seasonal Variation in Fishing Strategies at
Two Iroquoian Village Sites Near Lake Simcoe, Ontario,” Environmental Archeology 3 (June 1998):
109-120; and Oro Historical Committee, The Story of Oro, 2nd ed. (Oro Station, ON: Township of Oro,
1987), 1-2; and Innisfil Public Library, “The Wendat (Huron) at Contact,” in The Native Peoples of Simcoe
County: A History of Simcoe and Area Native Peoples, online virtual branch (Innisfil, ON: Innisfil Public
Library, n.d.), available from: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/settlement/kids/021013-2111.2-e.html.
225See Marcel Trudel, “Samuel de Champlain,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James H. Marsh
(Toronto: Historica Foundation, 2012), available from: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/
samuel-de-champlain.
226See Vincent Levesque, “The History of the Huron-Wendat Nation,” educational website of the Huron-
Wendat Nation (Wendake, PQ: Kwe Kwe Communication), available from: http://www.wendake.com/
history.html; Innisfil Public Library, “The Archeological Record,” in The Native Peoples of Simcoe County:
A History of Simcoe and Area Native Peoples, online virtual library branch (Innisfil, ON: Innisfil Public
Library, n.d.), available from: http://www.innisfil.library.on.ca/natives/natives/index2.htm; and Elsey
Connelley, “The Wyandot,” in Indian Myths, n.p.
227See Chippewas of Rama First Nation, “About Us,” online history (Rama, ON: Rama First Nation, n.d.),
available from: http://www.mnjikaning.ca/about.asp; and Mary O’Brien, Journals, 57-63, 187-88, 246-47,
272, 277.
228The Woods was indeed a dream come true for the O’Briens. On their first visit to Lake Simcoe, the
area enthralled O’Brien’s parents, fueling their musings that they should get land there. His mother’s
words exactly were: “Meanwhile we sit on the rail [of the boat], talk, and dream. My dream is that...we will
pay a visit to Lake Simcoe again” (Journals, 60).
229 Ibid., 184.
230 Ibid., 185.
231 W. [Willy] E. O’Brien, “Early Days in Oro,” Pioneer Papers 1 (1908): 24.
232 Mary O’Brien, Journals, 193.
ENDNOTES 437
______________________________________________________________________
269The bear and cedar swamp drawings (with one other), were engraved by J. W. Cook for A. W. H.
Rose, Canada in 1849: Pictures of Canadian Life; or, The Emigrant Churchman in Canada, by a
Wilderness Pioneer, 2 vols., ed. Rev. Henry Christmas (London: Richard Bentley, 1849). They already
begin to illustrate very telling aspects that hint at the later formal system characterizing his art, but to
conserve space I will reserve my commentary for his most popular work from the 1870s and 80s. For
water being the dominant element in his art, see Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 88.
270 Indigenous Storywork, 93.
271 Mary O’Brien, Journals, 251.
272 Ibid.
273
For the Gagen reference, see Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 25. For O’Brien’s reputation in the 1870s, see
Reid, “Our Own Country Canada,” 226.
274
Anonymous, “Fine Art: The Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists,” The Canadian Monthly and
National Review 11.6 (June 1877): 681.
275 Ibid., 682.
276
Anonymous, The Nation 2 (14 May 1875): 226; and Anonymous, “The Fine Arts in Ontario,” The
Canadian Monthly and National Review 3.6 (June 1873): 545, respectively.
277 Anonymous, “The Fine Arts in Ontario,” 545.
278Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 23. For a full discussion of the differences between social narrative
and earth narrative, in the context of the landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, see ibid., 18-23.
279For a detailed account of this relationship in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British
landscape, see John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting,
1730-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
280 Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 25.
281 This painting is known by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre as Landscape with Lake.
282 Anonymous, “Fine Art,” 681.
283 Lucius R. O’Brien, 47.
284Bierstadt’s St. Lawrence River from the Citadel, Québec (c.1880), is a similar version to O’Brien’s of
Princess Louise’s original drawing in that it also includes another rampart wall perpendicular along the
bottom of the painting. The difference here, however, is that the viewer is set so much further back on the
rampart that she has space to move. It is far less awkward and constrictive, and this new rampart wall in
Bierstadt’s painting even includes other figures enjoying the same linear view over the landscape as the
viewer. The social narrative emphasized by Louise is left in tact.
285 The Globe, 2 May 1881, also quoted in Reid, “Our Own Country Canada,” 323.
ENDNOTES 440
______________________________________________________________________
350 The original members of the Group of Seven were: Lawren Harris (1885-1970), J.E.H. MacDonald
(1873-1932), A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974), Fred Varley (1881-1969), Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945),
Arthur Lismer (1885-1969), and Frank Johnston (1888-1949). Before the Group disbanded, it also came
to include A.J. Casson (1898-1992), Edwin Holgate (1892-1977), and L.L. Fitzgerald (1890-1956).
Although Tom Thomson had suddenly died before the official formation of the Group, he was so close to
them when alive that when abbreviating the Group’s name to just “the Group” throughout this dissertation,
I also include Thomson under its umbrella.
351John O’Brian, “Wild Art History,” in Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and
Contemporary Art, eds. John O’Brian and Peter White (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 2007), 21.
352See, for example, MacTavish, Fine Arts in Canada, 154; F.B. Housser, A Canadian Art Movement: The
Story of the Group of Seven (Toronto: Macmillan co. of Canada, 1926); McInnes, Short History, 80-81;
William Colgate, Canadian Art: Its Origin and Development (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1943), 81-102;
Donald W. Buchanan, The Growth of Canadian Painting (London and Toronto: Collins, 1950), 27; and
Hubbard, Anthology, 24.
353
See Charles C. Hill, Canadian Painting in the Thirties (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975);
David P. Silcox, The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson (Toronto: Firefly Books, 2003); Ross King,
Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010);
and Ian A.C. Dejardin, “Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven,” in Painting Canada:
Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, ed. Amy Concannon, exh. cat. (London: Philip Wilson Publishers
and Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2011), 10-27.
354 Dejardin, “Painting Canada,” 26.
355See Jonathan Bordo, “Jack Pine: Wilderness Sublime or the Erasure of the Aboriginal Presence from
the Landscape,” Journal of Canadian Studies 27.4 (Winter 1992): 98-126; Scott Watson, “Race,
Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of Modern Canadian Landscape Painting,” Semiotext(e) 17 (1994):
93-104; Lynda Jessup, “The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More
Things Change…,” Journal of Canadian Studies 37.1 (Spring 2002): 144-79; Dawn, National Visions; and
O’Brian and White, eds., Beyond Wilderness.
356 Jessup, “The Group of Seven,” 166.
357 See especially Bordo, “Jack Pine”; Watson, “Race, Wilderness, Territory”; and Dawn, National Visions.
358For an example of a “traditionalist” downplaying criticism against the Group, see Silcox, The Group of
Seven, 39. For an example of postcolonial criticism that downplays the traditional approach to the Group,
see O’Brian and White, “Introduction,” in Beyond Wilderness, 5.
359 Peter White, “Out of the Woods,” in Beyond Wilderness, 20.
360See Donald W. Buchanan, "The Story of Canadian Art," Canadian Geographical Journal 17.6
(December, 1938): 279; and Joyce Zemans, “Establishing the Canon: Nationhood, Identity and the
National Gallery’s First Reproduction Programme of Canadian Art,” Journal of Canadian Art History 16.2
(1995): 7-35.
361 “Out of the Woods,” 20.
ENDNOTES 444
______________________________________________________________________
362See, Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury
Press, 2009), 1; and Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 2.
363
“Out of the Woods,” 13. See also, for other examples referring to this dilemma, Whitelaw, “Placing
Aboriginal Art,” 198; and Hudson, “Landscape Atomysticism: A Revelation of Tom Thomson,” in Painting
Canada, 30.
364 O’Brian and White, “Introduction,” in Beyond Wilderness, 4.
365 White, “Out of the Woods,” 18-19.
366 Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 32.
367 Beyond Wilderness, 236.
368Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 27; quoted in Beyond
Wilderness, 239.
369See, for just a few examples, Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, 18; Alfred, Wasáse, 206-07,
269; Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 80; and John Mohawk, “A Basic Call to Consciousness: The
Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World,” in Basic Call to Consciousness, ed. Akwesasne Notes
(1978; reprint, Summertown, TN: Native Voices, 2005), 90-91.
370 “A Basic Call to Consciousness,” 90.
371 Ibid., 4.
372 Becoming Animal, 69.
373 Ibid., 69-70.
374 Abram, Becoming Animal, 72.
375See, for example, Lawren Harris, “Revelation of Art in Canada,” The Canadian Theosophist 7.5 (July
1926): 87.
376 Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 53.
377See “Construction of the Imaginary Indian,” in Vancouver Anthology: The Institutional Politics of Art, ed.
Stan Douglas (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 267; also quoted in O’Brian and White, Beyond
Wilderness, 219.
378
Reid, “Introduction,” in The Group of Seven, exh. cat. (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1970);
quoted in Beyond Wilderness, 105. See also Robert Stacey, “The Myth - and Truth - of the True North,” in
The True North: Canadian Landscape Painting, 1896-1939, ed. Michael Tooby (London: Lund Humphries
and Barbican Art Gallery, 1991), 39-40; also quoted in Beyond Wilderness, 260.
379 National Visions, National Blindness, 311.
ENDNOTES 445
______________________________________________________________________
380See, for example, Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 313; Frances W. Kaye, Hiding the
Audience: Viewing Arts and Arts Institutions on the Prairies (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2003),
55-92; and Kaye, Hiding the Audience, 93-138, respectively.
381 Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 121.
382
Mildred Valley Thornton, Indian Lives and Legends (Vancouver: Mitchell Press, 1966), 10; quoted in
Sheryl Salloum, The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton (Salt Spring Island, BC: Mother Tongue
Publishing, 2011), 40.
383 National Visions, National Blindness, 269.
384 “Race, Wilderness, Territory,” 104; also quoted in Beyond Wilderness, 282.
385 National Visions, National Blindness, 127.
386 See Salloum, Mildred Valley Thornton, 1-9.
387 To our ears today, some of her message might still seem tainted with colonialist ideas, (i.e.: advocating
for equal opportunity through granting Aboriginal peoples official citizenship into Canada, not self-
governance outright; or equal education through allowing Aboriginal students into Canadian schools with
all the other children in the country), but she was way ahead of her time in always striving “for mutual
exchange, collaboration and education, as opposed to personal profit or exploitation,” through her
lectures and portraiture. Salloum, Mildred Valley Thornton, 43.
388 See ibid., 64-65.
389 National Visions, National Blindness, 313.
390Harris, “Revelation of Art in Canada,” The Canadian Theosophist 7.5 (July 1926): 86; Lismer is
paraphrased in Joan Murray, Masterpieces: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (Toronto: Prospero
Books, 1994), 76.
391 Canadian Art Movement, 120.
392 The Group of Seven, 49-50.
393 Bordo, “Jack Pine.”
394 Paradoxes of Art, 158-97.
395 Canadian Art Movement, 118-19.
396 See Paskow, Paradoxes of Art, 168.
397 See Housser, Canadian Art Movement, 117.
398For the gale winds, see Lord, History of Painting, 136. For the list of rhetorical terms, see Murray,
Masterpieces, 76; Hudson, “Landscape Atomysticism,” 30; Housser, Canadian Art Movement, 120; Bordo,
“Jack Pine”; and Lord, History of Painting, 136, respectively.
ENDNOTES 446
______________________________________________________________________
439“The Alternate Eden: A Primer of Canadian Abstraction,” in Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada, ed.
Robert Bringhurst, Geoffrey James, Russell Keziere, and Doris Shadbolt (Vancouver and Toronto:
Douglas & McIntyre, 1983), 80. See also Harper, Painting in Canada, 344, 347-48; and Reid, Concise
History, 226-29.
440 Abstract Painting, 375.
441Bradley, Perspective 96 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1996), 15; also quoted in Nasgaard, Abstract
Painting, 376.
442 See Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 166.
443 Borduas to Fernand Leduc, 6 January 1948; quoted in Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 15.
444 Abram, Becoming Animal, 262.
445 Ibid., 281.
446 Heath, “A Sense of Place,” in Visions, 47.
447 Ibid.
448 Ibid., 62.
449 Ibid., 65.
450 Ibid.
451 Kaplan, “Multiple Vision,” Canadian Literature 103 (Winter 1984): 81.
452
See, for example, Doreen Jensen, “Metamorphosis,” 90-121; Gerald McMaster, “Contributions to
Canadian Art by Aboriginal Contemporary Artists,” in Hidden in Plain Sight: Contributions of Aboriginal
Peoples to Canadian Identity and Culture, vol. 1, eds. David R. Newhouse, Cora J. Voyageur, and Dan
Beavon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 155-56; and Aldona Jonaitis, Art of the Northwest
Coast (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006).
453 Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 142.
454Harper, Painting in Canada, 344; Reid, Concise History, 233; Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 89; and
Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 143, respectively.
455 Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 66-67.
456 Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 140.
457 Abstract Painting, 83.
458See Ray Ellenwood, Egregore: A History of the Montreal Automatist Movement (Toronto: Exile
Editions, 1992), 145-55; and François-Marc Gagnon, Chronique du mouvement automatiste québécois
1941-1954 (Outrement, QC: Lanctôt, 1998), 494-556.
ENDNOTES 449
______________________________________________________________________
479 Lionel Beitone et al. “Order—Disorder in the Super-Sodalite Zn3Al6(PO4)12, 4tren, 17H2O
(MIL-74): A Combined XRD—NMR Assessment,” Journal of the American Chemical Society
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Wulf Depmeier, “The Sodalite Family—A Simple but Versatile Framework Structure,” Reviews in
480
481
Doreen Virtue and Judith Lukomski, Crystal Therapy: How to Heal and Empower Your Life with Crystal
Energy (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2005), 1.
482 Abram, Becoming Animal, 43.
483 See ibid., 44.
484 See ibid., viii.
485
Phyllis Galde, “Sodalite,” in Llewellyn Encyclopedia (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn
Worldwide, 2013), available from: http://www.llewellyn.com/encyclopedia/term/Sodalite.
486 Patricia Jean Martin, “Sodalite,” online essay for personal crystal worker website (2006), available
from: http://www.controverscial.com/Sodalite.htm. See also Rebecca De Carlo, “Sodalite,” That Crystal
Site, online website (2013), available from: http://www.thatcrystalsite.com/guide/properties-glossary.php?
init=s.
487 See Wasáse, 266.
488See “Peinture et territoire en dialogue. Regard de Paul-Émile Borduas sur l’Amérique,” Mens 10.1
(Autumn 2009): 51-93.
489 As quoted in Reid, Concise History, 243.
490
See Reid, Concise History, 241-42; Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 142; and Nasgaard,
Abstract Painting, 88.
491 Reid, Concise History, 241.
492 Native Science, 46.
493 Abram, Becoming Animal, 269.
494 Ibid., 268.
495 See Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 142-43.
496 See Abstract Painting, 89.
500“Wall Labels: Word, Image, and Object in the Work of Robert Morris,” in Robert Morris: The Mind/Body
Problem, eds. Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Krens, David Anti, and Maurice Berger (New York: Guggenheim
Museum Publications, 1994), 63-64.
501 “Wayward Landscapes,” in Robert Morris, 26.
502
See Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2002), 3.
503Ann Reynolds, Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2003), 45 and 43, respectively.
504 See ibid., 74-75.
505 Ibid., 221.
506See Ron Graziani, Robert Smithson and the American Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 120-21, 182.
507
Richard Sieburth, “A Heap of Language: Robert Smithson and American Hieroglyphics,” in Robert
Smithson, eds. Eugenie Tsai and Cornelia Butler (Berkeley: University of California Press, for the
Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004), 222-23.
508 Indigenous Storywork, 149, 31-32, and 126, respectively.
509 Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 93.
510 Ibid., 90.
511 Ibid., 142.
512For all the above quotations see, respectively, Richard Hill, “Meeting Ground: the Reinstallation of the
Art Gallery of Ontario’s McLaughlin Gallery,” in Making a Noise!: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art
History, Critical Writing and Community, ed. Lee-Ann Martin (Banff: Banff International Curatorial Institute
and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, 2004), 54; Brenda L. Croft, “What About the Dots and
Circles?! The Children Need Them,” in Making a Noise!, 125; and Guy Sioui Durand, “Ak8a-Enton8hi of
Saliva and Quill,” in Making a Noise!, trans. Jane C. Lamb-Ruiz, 131.
513
All of the quotations from and references to Dirk Romijnen’s art story are from “Conversation with Dirk
Romijnen,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 18 March 2010.
514
All of the quotations from and references to Lily Somner’s art story are from “Conversation with Lily
Somner,” in-person interview with the author, Edmonton, Alberta, 20 March 2010.
515 Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 15.
516
All of the quotations from and references to Crow Dennett’s art story are from “Conversation with Crow
Dennett,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 30 April 2010.
517Patricia Ainslie and Mary-Beth Laviolette, Alberta Art and Artists (Calgary: Fifth House, 2007), xi. See
also Nancy Townshend, A History of Art in Alberta, 1905-1970 (Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 2005), 1 and 98.
ENDNOTES 452
______________________________________________________________________
539
All of the quotations from and references to Julie Dubois’s art story are from “Conversation with Julie
DuBois,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 29 March 2010.
540All of the quotations from and references to Diane Stuart’s art story are from “Conversation with Diane
Stuart,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 17 March 2011.
541 See Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 44.
542 Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 12 and 100, respectively.
543
For more on salmon energy, see Jamie Sams and David Carson, Medicine Cards (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1999), 232-34.
550Bill Reid, “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii,” in Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, ed. Robert
Bringhurst (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 244.
551 Ibid., 246.
552
David A. Lertzman and Harrie Vredenburg, “Indigenous Peoples, Resource Extraction and Sustainable
Development: An Ethical Approach,” Journal of Business Ethics 56.3 (2005): 251.
553 See, for example, Ralston Saul’s discussion of the “elite failure” of Canadian politicians and the
fisheries industry in regards to West Coast shrimp trawling (A Fair Country, 189–91). See also Lertzman
and Vredenburg, “Indigenous Peoples,” 241–42, for a more general discussion regarding the
unsustainability of current industrial trends. This discussion helps introduce their proposed model for
sustainability within the context of a case from the West Coast logging industry. To be sure, there are
people within governments and industries in Canada who are working to change unsustainable trends.
And change has been happening, however slowly, especially as more and more Aboriginal people, with
their knowledge and cultural teachings, are included as equal and respected consultants and contributors
in the courtroom and on scientific panels. However, much of this particular life-experience story has yet to
unfold.
554All of the quotations from and references to Mark Lightner’s art story are from “Conversation with Mark
Lightner,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 25 March 2010.
555
Bill Reid, “Haida Means Human Being,” in Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, ed.
Robert Bringhurst (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 147, 150, 161. The essay was
published in full for the first time posthumously in 2000.
556 Reid, “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii,” 246.
557
All of the quotations from and references to Leo Campari’s art story are from “Conversation with Leo
Campari,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 19 April 2010.
558 For more on this process, see the work of ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin, especially Soulcraft: Crossing
into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato: New World Library, 2003).
559 See McMaster, “Contributions to Canadian Art.” See also Marie Battiste, “Maintaining Aboriginal
Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie
Battiste (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), 202. One of Battiste’s main points here
is that “Western education has much to gain by viewing the world through the eyes and languages of
Aboriginal peoples.” She discusses the importance of respecting and protecting Aboriginal rituals,
ceremonies, and tribal knowledge in this endeavour—all of which are issues engaged, operationalized,
and shared through contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art. For further discussion on the storywork of
other important Aboriginal artists in Canada, including Norval Morrisseau and Joane Cardinal-Schubert,
see Patenaude, “Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Art.”
ENDNOTES 455
______________________________________________________________________
560See, for example, Marie Wadden, Where the Pavement Ends: Canada’s Aboriginal Recovery
Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009),
226–29. Aboriginal peoples have made many important contributions to the dominant Canadian system,
as demonstrated by the contributors to Hidden in Plain Sight (ed. David R. Newhouse, Cora J. Voyageur,
and Dan Beavon). However, as many Aboriginal writers have argued, Canada’s colonial structure is still
deeply entrenched within educational, political, and judiciary systems that are characterized less by a
possibility for an equal partnership and more by an emphasis on a one-way, top-down flow of knowledge.
561The comment about treaty making is from Wanipigow’s administrator of social development programs,
Marcel Hardisty, quoted in Wadden, Where the Pavement Ends, 226. It relates to Hardisty’s statement to
Wadden about the importance and intensity of “sharing” to Aboriginal peoples in this historical context.
The treaties, he notes, originally involved a level of intercultural sharing that holistically included the
actual raw resources of water, minerals, land, and air, but that has often been concealed or neglected in
mainstream Canada today. For more about “sharing” as it relates to the reconciliation process in Canada,
see Michael Murphy, “Civilization, Self-Determination, and Reconciliation,” in First Nations, First
Thoughts: The Impact of Indigenous Thought in Canada, ed. Annis May Timpson (Vancouver: University
of British Columbia Press, 2009), 251. Murphy argues, contra Tom Flanagan, First Nations? Second
Thoughts (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000), that reconciliation is indeed
bound up with Aboriginal nationalism and “encompasses a forward-looking relationship among equals
who will seek to establish bonds of trust and mutual respect.” This kind of sharing, however, is, according
to Murphy, often thwarted by civilizationist policies and paradigms, such as Flanagan’s, which predict the
inevitability of assimilation. For “sharing” and sustainable development, see Lertzman and Vredenburg,
“Indigenous Peoples,” 239–54. The authors argue that a substantive intercultural sharing through
dialogue between Aboriginal peoples and the resource extraction industries is key to sustainable
development in Canada.
562 Ralston Saul, A Fair Country, 79.
563 Murphy, “Civilization,” 267.
564 Harper, Painting in Canada, 196.
565 Ibid., 197.
566 Ibid., 201.
567 Ibid., 197.
568 Ibid., 181, 180, and 181, respectively.
569 “Bertram Brooker,” YorkSpace Digital Library (June 2012): 14.
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As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to
reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the
said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence
as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said painting(s), understand that the University of
Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation, including a
reproduction of the painting(s) above, worldwide in print and electronic format and in any
medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may,
without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for
the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one
copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware
that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said
painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the
said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I acknowledge that the University of
Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who
access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Aaron Paquette
22 July 2014
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to
reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the
said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence
as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. On behalf of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the owner of the said painting(s), I
understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the
submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but
not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the
content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of
preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the
submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the
University of Calgary will clearly identify the name of the Art Gallery of Ontario when applicable,
and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s). Finally, I
acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted
dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Sean Weaver
Art Gallery of Ontario
!
Reproduction Application Form
The conditions for reproduction permission are listed on the second page of this form. Sign and return the form
to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Images will be released on receipt of payment and the completed form.
Name: Troy Patenaude
Telephone: 403-389-7579
Email: trcpaten@ucalgary.ca
Name of publication, exhibition, etc. in which reproduction will appear:
PhD dissertation
Date of
Publication: n/a Publisher: n/a
n/a (diss. will be stored by U of C Language(s
Distribution: for educational purposes only) ): English
Page
ISBN#: n/a count: around 500 pages
at most 6 copies may be printed
for my examining committee,
Print Run: and that’s it
TO REPRODUCE THE FOLLOWING ITEM(S): (Please give full details and reference numbers)
!
RCIN 405305: Lucius O'Brien, View From King's Bastion, Quebec, 1881!
RCIN 404834: Lucius O'Brien, Quebec from Point Levis, 1881!
Publisher:
THE APPLICANT AGREES THAT THIS PERMISSION, IF GRANTED, SHALL BE SUBJECT TO THE
CONDITIONS LISTED BELOW AND TRANSPARENCIES (IF SUPPLIED) WILL BE RETURNED
WITHIN ONE MONTH OF THE DESPATCH DATE.
1. All colour transparencies, digital images and photographic prints of items in the Royal
Collection have been made by gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen, and by or under
the direct control of the employees of the Royal Collection. Copyright therein, by reason of the
Copyright Act 1998, belongs to Her Majesty accordingly.
4. In the reproduction process, the object illustrated in the transparency, digital image or
photograph may not be cropped, bled off the page, overprinted, printed on coloured stock,
altered or manipulated in any way without prior written approval from Royal Collection Trust. If
a detail is used it must be identified as such.
5. The following credit line must be used whenever an image from the Royal Collection is
reproduced “Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014”. In addition,
the correct image caption details must be used and where required, the photographer must be
credited. Failure to credit an image may result in additional fees being charged.
6. If so required, proofs must be submitted for approval, and only such reproductions as are
approved may be published. If no proofs are approved or where permission to reproduce is
withdrawn, any reproduction fees already paid in connection with the specific project will be
refunded.
7. Reproduction is only permitted from photographic material supplied by Royal Collection Trust.
At least 2 copies of the publication must be provided free of charge to RC upon publication.
8. All reproduction fees, photography costs, initial transparency hire, and print purchase fees must
be paid to Royal Collection Trust before photographic materials will be despatched or
permission to use images given.
9. A hire fee will be charged per month per transparency. In addition, a deposit may be required
per transparency.
11. This licence may be revoked at any time if the Licensee is in breach of any of its terms.
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission for
one-time use to reproduce an image of the artwork(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am
aware that the said dissertation will also fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive
distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. On behalf of the Tate Gallery, the copyright owner of the said artwork(s), I
understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the
submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but
not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the
content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of
preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the
submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the
University of Calgary will clearly identify the name of the copyright owner of the said artwork(s)
when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said
artwork(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any
misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the
University.
Sincerely,
Bernard Horrocks
Intellectual Property Manager
Tate Gallery
Mother Tongue Publishing Phone 250-537-4155
290 Fulford-Ganges Rd. Fax 250-537-4725
Salt Spring Island Email mona@mothertonguepublishing.com
B.C. V8K 2K6 www.mothertonguepublishing.com
Nov.13.13
to be reproduce in your PhD dissertation entitled When a Bear Charges, or Artists Paint: Re-
envisioning the Story of Art in Canada. The PhD with images will be stored by the University in their
dissertation collection only. A fee of $100 for useage would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
PRINT NAME___________________________________ADDRESS_______________________________________
Mona Fertig
Mother Tongue Publishing
Fax: 250-537-4725
http://www.mothertonguepublishing.com
22 July 2014
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission for
one-time use to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am
aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive
distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. On behalf of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), I understand that the
University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation
worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or
video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the
submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that
the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for
purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will
clearly identify the name of the MMFA when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the
reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary
is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the
submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Marie-Claude Saia
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
23 July 2014
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to
reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the
said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence
as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. I, the copyright owner of the above painting(s), understand that the University of
Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation, including a
reproduction of the said painting(s), worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium,
including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without
changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the
purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one
copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware
that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said
painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the
said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I acknowledge that the University of
Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who
access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
George Simon
22 July 2014
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to
reproduce an image of the artwork(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the
said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence
as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said artwork(s), understand that the University of
Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print
and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that
the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation
to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of
Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security,
backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name
as the copyright owner of the said artwork(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration
to the reproduced image(s) of the said artwork(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of
Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who
access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to
reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the
said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence
as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said painting(s), understand that the University of
Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print
and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that
the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation
to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of
Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security,
backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name
as the copyright owner of the said painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration
to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I
acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted
dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Heather Shillinglaw
22 July 2014
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to
reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the
said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence
as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its
reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not
been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said painting(s), understand that the University of
Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print
and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that
the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation
to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of
Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security,
backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name
as the copyright owner of the said painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration
to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I
acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted
dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Chris Flodberg