ARTIST PROFILE

“Among the Indians, as among other nations, some people are born artists, but most are not.  I am a born artist.  I have as much interest in my people as any anthropologist, and I have studied our culture and lore.  My aim is to reassemble the pieces of a once proud culture, and to show the dignity and bravery of my people(1).”

These are the words of Norval Morrisseau, Aboriginal Canadian artist, storyteller, Grand Shaman and founder of the Woodland School of Art.  Morrisseau has accomplished his aim and more.  This brief biographical profile takes a closer look at the years 1959-1975.  This period marked the start of his career as an artist and a meteoric rise to fame in art circles, both nationally and beyond.  It also spans most of the years of his married and family life, a large part of which was spent in the Red Lake area.  Hence, Norval Morrisseau: The Red Lake Years. 

Dates and locations of Morrisseau’s birth and birthplace differ - March 14, 1931 in Fort William, Ontario or March 14, 1932 at Sand Point Reserve near Beardmore, Ontario.  He was the eldest of five boys born to Abel Morrisseau and Grace Theresa Potan Nanakonagos. Baptismal records show his name as Jean Baptiste Normand Henri Morrisseau with yet another birth date - March 26, 1933.  These interesting discrepancies are mere details about the life of the man now known as Norval Morrisseau.  He describes “soul travel” which takes him to other dimensions.  His life reflects clear extremes of physical, emotional, spiritual and economic states of being.  He has been a ‘larger than life’ figure who has survived on the street.  Here are some parts of the story of the ‘storyteller’.

After a short period in residential school in Thunder Bay, Morrisseau returned to Beardmore to rejoin his grandparents, who were raising him, an Ojibway tradition for the firstborn son.  The influence of his maternal grandfather, Moses “Potan” Nanakonagos, has been well documented.  Moses was a storyteller/shaman among his people and Morrisseau absorbed the oral legends and beliefs from his earliest years.    

In 1957 Morrisseau married Harriet Kakegamic - now  remembered as a tall, attractive, likable woman - who was from Sandy Lake Reserve northeast of Red Lake.  They met in Fort William (now Thunder Bay) at the tuberculosis sanatorium while Morrisseau was receiving treatment.   The “Red Lake Years” began in 1959 when Morrisseau arrived in Cochenour, Ontario to work in the Cochenour-Willans gold mine.  He was tall, slim and soft-spoken.  His job in the mill was as a “flotation operator,” watching and adjusting a large vat of liquid gold ore and chemicals.  This two-year span has been referred to as the longest period of steady employment Morrisseau experienced.  Fellow employees recall Morrisseau painting during slack times on the job.  The art, sometimes on mill filter paper,  was left rolled in a corner of the mill when he had to attend to the flotation mix.  Although lacking any formal art instruction, he had no inhibitions about how to paint.  His early materials included birchbark, hide, plywood, building paper, fabric scraps - anything that was at hand.   There was resistance to his art because he was breaking a taboo by depicting beliefs and traditions of the Ojibway culture but Morrisseau believed this task had been given to him in a vision and was sanctioned by his grandfather.  

Dr. Joseph Weinstein began to practice medicine in Cochenour in 1955, moving his family from Montreal to this remote area.  At that time Mckenzie Island, a short boat ride across the Bruce Channel from Cochenour, provided the nearest grocery store.  His wife, Esther, was shopping in Fergus McDougall’s store and spotted some art resting on the floor. The Weinsteins were widely travelled, and studies in archaeology and an interest in the art of various cultures sparked her curiosity.  She bought the painting, and this marked the beginning of an important and supportive relationship between Morrisseau, the young artist, and the Weinstein family.  When they left the area six years later, Morrisseau sent with them a gift of one of his paintings to present to Picasso, with whom the couple was acquainted.

Selwyn Dewdney, artist and author, visited Red Lake several times.  In 1960 he was to spend a summer visiting and recording rock painting sites.  He had heard via a friend, OPP officer Robert Sheppard, that there was an interesting Native artist in the area.  He and Morrisseau met on McKenzie Island and, after time spent together paddling through northwestern Ontario, collaborated on a book Legends of My People, The Great Ojibway, published in 1965.  These rock paintings are an expression of the same legends, spiritual beliefs and history which underlay Morrisseau’s art.

In the summer of 1962 Morrisseau was in Beardmore.  Jack Pollock, a young art gallery-owner  from Toronto, was teaching art in Northwestern Ontario on a government-sponsored programme.  On the second day of his classes in Beardmore Pollock looked up to see Morrisseau, with art rolled under his arm.  Pollock was “stunned” at the quality of what he saw (2).  He arranged for a show of Morrisseau’s work at his gallery in Toronto in September, 1962. It was a complete sell-out.  But the response of the Toronto art world was not reflected in Red Lake for several years.  However, Morrisseau did prepare for another exhibit soon after by confining himself to the basement of the “What-Not Shop” in Red Lake as he painted non-stop.  His life as an artist of renown had begun.

Over the next decade there would be exhilarating peaks of fame and monetary reward followed by valleys of  impoverishment and neglect of his family.  In the midst of this, some saw evidence of a deep affection between husband and wife.  Others saw a very unequal relationship which allowed one partner to pursue his destiny and the other to attempt to raise six children with minimal support.  The family often experienced the frustration of being presented with extravagant but useless gifts (such as a set of Spode china) while there was no food or in the house.  Harriet’s baseball arm helped to dispose of the china!

The children were born from 1957-1975 as the family moved between Beardmore, Cochenour, Sandy Lake, McKenzie Island and Red Lake.  Morrisseau reportedly enjoyed children and one large portrait of his daughter, Victoria, with his first grandson, conveys pride and love.  An interesting paradox is that in his art children are shown richly-dressed with looks of wonder and contentment, while his own children experienced neglect and poverty.

Harriet’s parents and siblings provided help but she also found herself dependent on government support and the kindness of the townspeople. Only one son, David, also an artist, speaks publicly of his father, and his comments are mostly negative.

From 1965 to 1975 the rising popularity of “Woodland Art” with Morrisseau as the founder began to make itself felt in Red Lake. However, there was a dilemma for townspeople.  Many were reluctant to buy Morrisseau’s paintings when he was intoxicated because they did not want to take advantage of him.  Others hesitated for another reason: they did not want to hand him cash when they suspected the money would be spent on alcohol, rather than to support his family.

The difficulties experienced by the Morrisseau family were not all the result of  Morrisseau’s behaviour.  Many families from reserve communities further north moved to larger centres such as Red Lake for employment,  and to avoid sending their children to attend residential school. When Morrisseau quit mining in the early 1960s and became a full-time artist, his family moved from a Cochenour Mine housing compound, locally known as “Hiawatha Drive”,  which was designated for Native people, to a small cabin on the hill of Mckenzie Island.  They later spent some time in very inadequate housing in Red Lake.   Although there was awareness of a housing crisis, various levels of government were slow to respond, and their attitudes were paternalistic. It was even difficult for Morrisseau, with money but with no steady employment, to open a bank account.

However, in 1973,  there was government support for the formation of the Triple K Cooperative in Red Lake.  Three of Harriet Morrisseau’s brothers - Henry, Joshim and Goyce Kakegamic - were the  founding triumvirate of this Native-run silk-screen endeavour, which was located in a modest building on Howey Street (now Panis Productions).  Although working with relatives proved to be challenging, Triple-K experienced success by producing high quality art prints which were both affordable and available.  This gave great impetus to the group of young artists who worked in the style that Morrisseau had originated and to the ever-increasing popularity of “Woodland Art”.  Morrisseau had provided the spark which ignited a movement.  It happened in Red Lake because he came here almost twenty years earlier and the community provided recognition and encouragement for a remarkable talent.

Today, Morrisseau, the born artist, continues to paint, despite the difficulties of living with Parkinson’s disease.  From his modest beginnings in remote locations in Northwestern Ontario, Morrisseau is now recognized as “the inspiration for one of Canada’s most vibrant exciting national art movements, the Woodland School of Art” (3).

Footnotes

(1) Herbert T. Schwarz, Windigo and Other Tales of the Ojibways. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1969) 6-7.
(2) Jack Pollock, Dear M :  Letters from a Gentleman of Excess, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989) 38.
(3) Norval Morrisseau, Norval Morrisseau : Travels to the House of Invention, (Toronto: Key Porter, 1997) jacket flyleaf.