NORVAL MORRISSEAU BLOG: Honouring the Great Colourists of the 20th Century (Part I)

Norval Morrisseau Quotes:

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"I transmit astral plane harmonies through my brushes into the physical plane. These otherworld colours are reflected in the alphabet of nature, a grammar in which the symbols are plants, animals, birds, fishes, earth and sky. I am merely a channel for the spirit to utilize, and it is needed by a spirit starved society."

"My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people."

"My goal is to break the barrier between the white world and mine. I wish only one thing, to be an artist and to be respected as one - and my paintings to be seen by all people."

"My heart and soul is reflected into my mind and my mind is reflected into my hands."

"From the first time I picked up the brush, painting became my passion. Over the years that passion has grown and strengthened. -

There is no other way to describe it. To paint is to live."

"I started to do some painting. I guess I saw some art literature from Arizona or the Southwest somewhere, but I was hungry to learn more. I wanted to paint my house and paint the walls in traditional pictographs like the ones I saw from the rock paintings and birch bark scrolls our people used to make."

"I was told by some relatives not to do this - that I should not be tampering with these forms, 'because the Indians will ostracize you'. Or the elders would not care for it, just like the Jesuits. -

Nevertheless I was determined to do it, for it is my destiny..."

"The Shaman Artist
Wishes to express to us
Through
The art form
That we are all
Like children-

Our childlike simplicity
With dignity and sweet humility
We view
One environment
and
Remind us of the Pure Spirit
Expressing itself upon ourselves."

"I don't wish my work to be exploited, but to be properly used as an art form in its proper place where for the generations of the great Ojibway people it can be seen in the future, as well as be appreciated by all our white brothers."

"I’ve been looking for books all my life – books about American Indians. Anything that I could find that was civil and worthwhile besides what my Grandfather was telling me about the Iroquois and others. There isn’t very much written about Natives in the art and history books we read today. The only thing that was written was about the Iroquois slaughtering the Jesuits somewhere and Sitting Bull and his followers being chased out of Canada."

"I want my work to be cornerstone for Indian art, to provide something that will last."

"I have always been attracted to religious paintings, but only the ones that had that mystical or supernatural quality in them, especially Saint Teresa by Bernini. Just looking at Saint Teresa I get some kind of vibrations from it. I can close my eyes and feel them. That's great art, and it brings on that tingling sexual feeling. Other saints, like Saint Sebastian, do that as well. But the Christ figure was always the one that was dominant for me.That's why I say that Christ to me is still the greatest shaman, and that is why some religious visions are so complex, and so very hard to explain to people."

"Love for life is a gift"

“I would like to say that I am an artist so that I can beautify the world and battle conditioned consciousness with the same tools used to condition it.

My culture is my world.”

“What I teach the people many times is that attitude and attention will determine the whole course of our lives. Get rid of fear and that is all you ever have to get rid of. Fear of anything at all.”

“My paintings are icons, that is to say, they are images which help focus on spiritual powers, generated by traditional belief and wisdom.”

"It is our Ojibwa tradition to recall our history or obtain our history in an oral manner. It is important for our children and others to benefit through the process of continuing to recall and make history."

"I guess I was increasingly seeking the art form and culture I was being taught, but there was none out there."

"The Grand Shaman is like the Pope of Rome. The Pope is on one side of coin, the Shaman on the other side of the coin."

"My Grandfather told me once that nobody, no matter how hard they tried, could he remember all of the legends, otherwise, the whole of Northwestern Ontario would be covered in Pictographs."

"I consider Manitoulin Island to be the most sacred place in Canada"

"My idea is, why I draw them, see, there's lots of stories that are told in Ojibway but that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to draw them - that's from my own self - my own idea what they look like."

"Be who you are no matter how hard it is. Never mind the ridicule."

"Just be"

"Today we wonder and are distracted by the white man's ways that we cannot cope with. Those of us who are lucky have made it. But a lot of us are still behind, by trying to live like our white brothers and their religion, ignoring our great ancestors' culture. If one has an intelligent mind we could live side by side with our ancient ways and same time get us where we should be."

"Armed with an arsenal of heavenly designs and sculptures, the priests were prepared and fearless. With their unlimited resources and soldiers they were sent to conquer the New World and bring their culture and religion to every corner."

"People had to be stripped of their culture before they could be taught to be civilized. The Natives of the Americas were not the dogs people were misled to believe, but rather a sophisticated network of different cultures, religions and so on."

"When the Jesuits came, the Indian was already around. The Indian did not understand them. He tried to understand them, what they were up to. He knew that they were going to be there for awhile. He knew how sad it was, seeing his people, how low they were put, how they had previously enjoyed living and needed to live freely again. How do we go about doing that now? We need images. We’re going to use images ourselves."

"To accomplish what I have started and to die in it feeling I have fulfilled what I started - to reach a level where I and Manitou and the Indian will always keep the Indian faith alive - to be a great Artist and Preserver of Indian culture. I accept it fully as a duty in life which was set forth for, to set an example."

"These paintings only remind you that you're an Indian. Inside somewhere, we're all Indians. So now when I befriend you, I'm trying to get the best Indian, bring out the Indianness in you to make you think everything is sacred."

"The Ojibway believed the thunder to be a great massive bird called thunderbird, whose eyes shoot out lighting and thunder. The first thunder in early spring was something good to hear, for the Ojibway welcomed their protector again from its home in the south where it had been all the winter. Offerings of tobacco were placed on the ground or on water or put into stove to burn, or sacred pipes were smoked by the elders to the thunderbird in the early spring."

"The fish, sacred trout, was the most respected of all fish. The trout gave the Indian life in abundance and according to Ojibwa Indian mythology it represented his soul carrier. The trout carried the Indian soul through transmigration into an other existence in the supernatural or reincarnation. All this belief worked for the betterment of the Indian food in reality - faith in the supernatural."

"Nepii-Naba, the merman, who brought good luck to those who offered him tobacco and, in return, helped Indians to travel safely on lakes and rivers"

“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.”

"Now, when I paint a picture I just alow myself to be used. I pick up the pencil and the canvas. I allow the interaction with soul to reflect in the mind, to put down these images of people, men or women or children especially. I may draw a hundred children, but there is never the same colour."

"I go to the inner places, I go to the source, I go to the house of invention."

"Many times people tell me that I’ve cured them of something, whatever’s ailing them. But I didn’t do anything. It was the colour of the painting that did it. But now it’s even much stronger. The healing is much stronger than it ever was. What I finally find is this: We could live with turmoil and the anguish in everything and still we could feel contented and happy and compassionate. What we got rid of is the stress with colour.”

"So, if am in this World to deliver any messages I wouldn't want to be a preacher. I would want to be a painter"

"Let's put it this way. I know what is to be hungry and poor in cloths. But the spirit of one that is poor shall never be weaken by hunger, as hunger is good matter. This is what gives a man life and wisdom. I don't regret that I was hungry."

"As for the colours, one was for the heart, one was for the bum, one was for the arms, one was for all the different kinds of sicknesses."

"A long time ago, maybe two or three hundred years ago, before white men were around, some people were worried about what was going to happen.... so they went to talk to a shaman. They asked him if he could find out. The shaman went to a sacred place and started singing and drumming. He beat on his drum harder and harder until he jumped right out of his body and began to rise up in his consciousness. He went up to the third astral plane where he could fly through time. He flew through time until he reached the year 2000 and then came down to look around. Below him he could see hundreds, thousands... more than he could count... millions of ants travelling down well traveled trails... and mountains sticking out of the plains like giant ice crystals, reflecting the sun back into his face. When he returned to his own time he told the people about what he had seen. He told them that what ever these creatures were, there was lots of them and they were coming."

"All is well"

"We natives believe in the following saying: "Our God is Native. The Great Deity of the Five Planes is so. We are neither for nor against, We speak not of Christ nor of God. We say, 'Let them be.' We follow the Spirit on its Inward Journey of Soul through attitudes and attentions. Remember we are all in a big School and the Inner Master teaches us Experience over many Lifetimes."

"I have always been attracted to religious paintings, but only the ones that had that mystical or supernatural quality in them, especially Saint Teresa by Bernini. Just looking at Saint Teresa I get some kind of vibrations from it. I can close my eyes and feel them. That's great art, and it brings on that tingling sexual feeling. Other saints, like Saint Sebastian, do that as well. But the Christ figure was always the one that was dominant for me.That's why I say that Christ to me is still the greatest shaman, and that is why some religious visions are so complex, and so very hard to explain to people. So whenever you are looking at my pictures, you are looking at my visions, whatever they may be."

"Years ago I was walking down the street in Winnipeg feeling sorry for myself. A man was walking towards me, He had long hair and a leather jacket, and as we meet he said,'Things are not as bad as we think'. I looked away for a second and when I looked back he was gone. I never saw that man again."

"I may not have a Ferrari, but I'm the first Indian to break into the Canadian art scene and I have forever enriched the Canadian way of life. I want to make paintings full of colour, laughter, compassion and love. I want to make paintings that will make people happy, that will change the course of people's lives. If I can do that, I can paint for 100 years."

"Why am I alive? To heal you guys who are more screwed up than I am. How can I heal you? With colour. These are the colours you dreamt about one night."

“They speak about this tortured man, me, but I'm not. I've had a marvelous time, when I was drinking and now that I'm not, a marvelous time in my life."

"I've always wanted to be a role model. I've always wanted to stay an Indian. I wanted the little kids to know that."

"Just as a fish swims in any clear northern lake (in a medium that is virtually invisible to the eye) so we, if we are to live all right, should realize we live in a dimension on which our very existence, as people and artists, depends. The dimension is that of connectivity in life shared together in mutual respect… Fish, in spawning runs, seem to urge each other on, to reach safe and secluded lakes, with plentiful food supplies. Once there, they can live more non-competitively."

"The Ojibways have great respect for the Bear. According to their legends, in the distant past the Bear had a human form and was in fact an ancestor of the Ojibways. Therefore he understands the Indian language and will never attack or fight any Indian if he is addressed properly."

"As far as sex was concerned. I did everything under the sun. In those days I was a very sexually oriented person. But things change, things develop, and everything sooner or later dies. There are some things that grow, and you constantly have to sort out your thoughts and ideas."

"I can live anywhere. I can paint anywhere. I have painted six panels of the Man Who Changed Into a Thunderbird. All these paintings came from within. I don't need to isolate myself to do them. I can paint them here, there or anywhere. A pipe band could be going by, or cars."

"I paint with these colours to heal, my paintings honour the Anishnaabe ancestors who have roamed the Great Lakes for centuries upon centuries."

"We are all one"

"My people believe the earth to be their mother and that we are children of the earth. In spirit we are one with our environment."

"Personally I am not thinking about myself truthfully in this present year but years ahead when I am death for the children of mine and the generations of my people to feel proud of the art heritage of the Ojibway and every nationality is proud of its culture."

"We Are All One in Spirit"

Others about Norval Morrisseau:

"When the history of the twentieth century art in North America is written, no chapter will be more dramatic or significant than that of the Anishnabe painters, the aboriginal people of the Great Canadian Shield. In the 1950's when it appeared that their culture was on the verge of being extinguished by the onslaught of the "white" civilization, there was a move by several individuals to preserve the ancient oral traditions by recording them in writing and in art. In so doing, the artist's developed a unique style, indigenous, distinctive, graphic, with a rare potential for narrative and an innate primitive beauty. By the very act of depicting legends, the artists defied centuries of taboos, and many interesting sociological events followed: a shift in the roles of shaman /artist/ hunter occurred in the Anishnabe culture; the art became a seminal force in a revitalization movement; and the entire Ojibway Nation, a people heretofore overlooked by the mainstream of history, was thrust suddenly into the spotlight glare of an art-loving public."
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Mary E. (Beth) Southcott
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"How was it possible for this youth to reach back to the old feelings, to conceive the images that would bear the unmistakable stamp of his people? How could this firm pride originate in a community relegated to the status of third class citizens, constantly reminded of this status and defeated by it? What was there about this lad that earned for him in a medicine woman's dream the combined names of a powerful spirit and the metal traditionally sacred to the Lake Superior Ojibway - Copper Thunderbird?"
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Selwyn Dewdney-
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"...Norval, with his incredible ability with the formal problems of art (colour-design-space) and his commitment to the world of his people, the great Ojibway, give one the sense of power that only genius provides... It is sufficient to say that in the history of Canadian Painting, few have, and will remain giants. Norval shall."

Jack Pollock -

"Morrisseau, the artist, is a teller of tales. But tales such as these are only as powerful as the power of the person who tells them. Behind the visual imagery lies the power of his personal recital of a legend. Behind the legend lies the personal vision that explains everything. It may be difficult to distinguish Ojibway mythic elements from personal ones, or to separate Indian versions of Catholic iconography from Morrisseau's own set of emblems. He is at his most Indian when he offers an explanation of what he is doing. The purpose of doing it may have been to share with the world a heritage of the Great Ojibway that is proud and full of worth. The reason for doing it is very Indian. Where other artists might claim logic, tradition or authority as justification, Morrisseau always justifies himself by the most Indian of all explanations: the imperative of a personal, unique and private vision, the only real consistency which lies at the back of all his work. Everything, ultimately, is validated by Morrisseau's unanswerable claim to be responding to the demands of that personal, unique and private vision."

Lister Sinclair

"Morrisseau's genius for unifying or braking space in his designs is astonishing, as sureness of line. It cannot be classed as primitive art, because both the ideas and the expression evince cultivated thought. As this mysticism has never been recorded he is breaking new ground."-

Pearl McCarthy-

"Norval Morrisseau stands alone in his formal innovation and largeness of personal vision. He was the first Indian to study seriously and to update his own cultural beliefs and translate them visually for contemporary Indian and non-Indian audiences. In doing so he became the first Indian to break through the Canadian professional white-art barrier. His brilliance lies in his ability to break away from his own conventions, to constantly renew his vision." -

Elizabeth McLuhan

“He blazed a path that many young artists followed. He was a great role model for younger artists. His courage, in confronting the oppression, the attempt by government policy which began in the 19th century to silence and hasten the end of traditional indigenous knowledge, it took great courage to confront that. He was an extraordinary man.”

Ruth Phillips

"He is one of the greatest painters Canada has ever produced. One day we were looking at the Group of Seven and he commented 'They paint trees, I paint loons and they connect to the sky'". -

Tom Hill

"Norval, like all innovators, had made a trajectory to contemporary cultural theory, an idea I was not to understand until quite recently. It situated Norval at the centre of a cultural transformation, contemporary Ojibwa art. This legendary artist had created a visual language whose lineage included the ancient shaman artists of the Midiwewin scrolls, the Agawa Bay rock paintings and the Peterborough petroglyphs. As a master narrator, he had a voice that thundered like the sentinel of a people still listening to the stories told since creation.” -

Robert Houle

"I believe that when Canada 'disappears', Morrisseau will remain. I believe history will note that Norval Morrisseau will be better known than Pablo Picasso. He's more original."-

Robert McMichael

''He was a role model, visionary and seminal force throughout Native America and Canada. We were especially fortunate to have the great man himself present at the opening of his major retrospective, 'Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist,' at our New York City museum. Through his groundbreaking and vibrant works, he positioned his rich indigenous heritage squarely within modern art; a revolutionary and uplifting achievement that influences contemporary culture through today.'"-

Kevin Gover -

"Norval Morrisseau's most significant and enduring achievement will be measured over generations as the lasting impact of his greatest ambition - to instill pride - makes itself felt in the art of new artists compelled to create by his masterful paintings."

Greg A. Hill

"Their great appeal partly derives from Mr. Morrisseau's marrying of an understanding of Indian spirituality with his own formal ambitions as a painter... New York has many museums with countless exhibitions, but it's been a long time since I saw a show of such potent spirituality, warmth and feeling."

Benjamin Genocchio -

"Norval Morrisseau's courageous and often controversial approach to his work was instrumental in encouraging First Nations people to know their spirituality, history and culture in order to better understand themselves. He taught us to be proud of who we are. He inspired countless other First Nations people to pursue a career in the arts. His legacy will remain with us and continue to inspire all Canadians for many generations to come."

Phil Fontaine

"Morrisseau was committed, from the very start, to preserving the stories and myths of his people. He never wavered. As troubled as his life was, he also went through it with this incredible sense of mission."

Paul Carvalho

"He was a courageous Aboriginal painter who, through perseverance and faith in his gift, was able to break through enormous cultural and racial barriers to bring his art not just to Canada, but to the world."

Chuck Strahl- -

"He has been described as perhaps the greatest native artist who ever lived - a primal visionary who gave form to the Ojibway legends and myths told to him by his maternal grandfather Moses "Potan" Nanakonagos."

Lloyd Dolha