Daily Art Fixx

Norval Morrisseau was born on March 14 or March 26, between 1931-1933, either at Sand Point Reserve near Beardmore, Ontario or Fort William, now part of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Morrisseau was a painter, carver, draughtsman, storyteller, teacher,  Grand Shaman, and was dubbed the “Picasso of the North” by the French press.

The first five sons, Morrisseau was, according to Ojibway custom, raised by his grandparents. He learned about Ojibway beliefs and Anishnaabe cosmology from his grandfather who was a member of the Midewiwin religious society.  As a child, he also learned about Christianity from his Catholic grandmother.  In the 1970s, he became interested in the spiritual philosophy of Eckankar and its theories of astral visions and soul travel. All of these experiences influenced his artistic development.

Self-taught, Morrisseau began drawing the ancient stories of his people at a very young age. He was discouraged by some who believed that the communication of any content from the scrolls was strictly the task of a Shaman. While Morrisseau continued to paint, he studied his Anishnaabe heritage intensively until he himself became a Shaman.

In 1956, Morrisseau contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to the Thunder Bay Tuberculosis Sanatorium where he continued creating artwork. While there, he met Harriet Kakegamic and the couple married in 1957 and had six children.

In 1962, Morrisseau’s  work  attracted the attention of Toronto gallery owner Jack Pollack who organized a successful  solo exhibition of  the artist’s work. Over the next decade, Morrisseau  developed his unique painting style termed the “Woodlands School” which was known for its vibrant colours, x-ray impressions, and flat forms separated by thick black lines.  His art influenced the work on numerous First Nation artists including Daphne Odjig, and Carl Ray.

Morrisseau was also known as Copper Thunderbird, a name he was given as a young man. “In Ojibway culture, the thunderbird acts as a go-between; in combination with “copper,” the name suggests that Morrisseau has the ability to unite opposing powers of underwater/underearth and above sky.” Morrisseau signed all of his works in Cree syllabics as Copper Thunderbird.

“Through the 1970s and ’80s, Morrisseau’s “eccentricities” – binge drinking and often a hand-to-mouth street existence – were the despair of his friends and buyers of his work who were uncertain of the authenticity of his paintings. The artist admitted in 2004 he had signed other artists’ work ‘if they needed the money.’”

The prevalence of forgeries, however, became a great concern to Morrisseau, especially in his later years, and he actively sought to remove these from the marketplace. In 2005 he established the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society (NMHS). The Society’s mandate is to catalogue and verify authentic Morrisseau paintings.

Morrisseau received numerous awards and honours in his lifetime including the Order of Canada in 1978, member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, recipient of Doctor of Laws, and Doctor of Letters,  holder of the Eagle Feather (the highest honour awarded by the Assembly of First Nations), and Grand Shaman. As well, he was the only Canadian painter invited to exhibit in the Paris French Revolution bicentennial in 1989.

In the last years of his life, Morrisseau was unable to paint. Afflicted by Parkinson’s disease, Norval Morrisseau died on December 4, 2007 in Toronto General Hospital. He was buried in Northern Ontario next to the grave of his ex-wife Harriet, on Anishinaabe land.

[View with PicLens]

Related Books:
Copper Thunderbird
Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist
Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings

Sources:Virtual Museum, Kinsman Robinson, McMichael Gallery, Cybermuse, Maslak McLeod Gallery, Wikipedia, Toronto Star

Born on March 12, 1918 (or 1920) in Brooklyn, New York, Elaine Marie Catherine Fried de Kooning was a painter, sculptor, draughtswoman, printmaker, writer, and wife of influential artist Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning studied in New York at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, the American Art School, the Academy School, and with Willem de Kooning. She was interested in both figurative and abstract art, acknowledging the influence of her husband and of the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School.

Elaine met Willem de Kooning in 1938 and the couple married  in 1943. They had a  turbulent marriage, separating in 1956 and reconciling in 1975. Though they benefited from one  another’s art and teaching, they also suffered from each other’s infidelities and struggles with alcoholism.

During the 1940s, de Kooning painted portraits of her family, her husband, and many of her literary friends and fellow artists, including the poets Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg and the choreographer Merce Cunningham.

De Kooning had her first solo exhibition  at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1952 and exhibited almost annually thereafter throughout the United States, including shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1964.

In 1962,  de Kooning was commissioned by the White House to paint the portrait of President John F. Kennedy. The portrait is one of de Kooning’s most well known and celebrated paintings. Following his assassination in 1963, de Kooning stopped painting for a year and took a teaching appointment at the University of California, Davis.

In the 1970s, de Kooning taught at numerous colleges including Yale University, Pratt Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Rice University, and others.

While de Kooning, like the “action” painters of the time, used gestural brushstrokes, most her work was figurative and representational,  and rarely pure abstraction.  An avid traveler, “she was exposed to and inspired by a wide variety of art work that helped make her one of the more diverse artists from the Abstract Expressionist movement; she experimented with sculpture, etchings and subject matter inspired by cave drawings, all in addition to her wealth of painting, which included everything from watercolors and still lifes to abstractions and formal portraits.”

De Kooning’s works are in the collections of numerous major American museums, including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Elaine de Kooning died of lung cancer on February 1, 1989. Willem de Kooning,  suffering from dementia at the time, was never  told of his wife’s death.

[View with PicLens]

Related Books:

Elaine and Bill
Abstract Expressionism
50 Women Artists You Should Know

Sources: Crown Point Press, The Art Story

Photographer and Architect Bernardo  Medina was born in El Salvador, Central America but has lived in Houston, Texas most of his life. A source of inspiration for his architectural projects, photography allows Medina to “play with the perception of the outside world…it’s structures, forms, colours, illusions, and clichés.”

Medina uses mostly digital photographic equipment from professional SLR’s to simple “point and shoot” digital pocket cameras. His work has been featured in books, magazines and publications around the world. In 2009, Medina won the Grand Prize in National Geographic’s “Ultimate Photo Contest”.

To see more of Medina’s work, visit 4EyesPhoto.com or his profile on Deviant Art.

Related Books:
National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Photography: Revised and Expanded (Photography Field Guides)
National Geographic: The Photographs (National Geographic Collectors Series)
Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs (National Geographic Collectors Series)

Sources: ND Magazine

American mixed media artist Jesse Hazelip was born in 1977 and raised in the mountain desert town of Cortez, Colorado, amidst  the Navajo and Ute Nation territory. He moved to Santa Barbara, California at the age of 14 where he became involved in the world of graffiti. Hazelip has a Bachelor of Fine Arts  from Art Center College of Design in California and currently lives in Oakland, CA.

Hazelip recently finished up his exhibition, “Sentimental Journey”, at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. This series  features the human exploration of death and the lessons ignored throughout North American history.

“World War II greatly influenced this series, where buffalo are named after actual 1950s Bomber airplanes and beautiful Herons are rendered half machine gun, half bird. Jesse uses these animals to open a dialogue about the repeating mistakes of American history. Just as our carelessness have forced bison, an American icon, to the brink of extinction; so has war almost destroyed our country. The Heron is also fused with WWII artillery, although its message differs. This greedy bird is solitary from the flock just as Americans are closed off to their own neighbors. By using recognizable images, Hazelip hopes to reach a larger audience by making his work approachable yet thought provoking.”

Hazelip’s work has been exhibited in galleries throughout California.  He also makes a living as a commercial illustrator working with clients such as Converse, Mishka NYC, and National Forest Design.

To see more of Jesse’s work, visit Jessehazelip.com or his blog JesseHazelip.blogspot.com

Sources: Submerge, Fecal Face, White Walls