JACKSON BEARDY (1944-1984) ANISHINAABE (OJI-CREE)
Untitled (Creation), 1980
oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm)
signed and dated, "Jaxon Beerdi 80".

ESTIMATE: $6,000 — $9,000

Provenance
Private Collection, Toronto.

This work closely recalls the themes and imagery found in Beardy’s seminal work, Rebirth, 1976, which was featured on a Canadian postage stamp in 1990. As with Rebirth, the alighting goose is tethered, here by its black wings as well as bands of orange and yellow, to an embryonic chick. These flowing lines are not only visually appealing, but within these colourful contours the tale of life’s full arc unfurls: each adult goose was once an embryo, destined to mature and command the sky and vice versa. These sinuous curves, a device used often by Beardy to anthropomorphize the winds, emerge and thread from a void in the goose’s body. Clearly, Beardy’s curiosity extended to exploring the tension between shape and form.

In this canvas Beardy also incorporates other visual elements that are iconic to his oeuvre. Notably, the divided circle motif is present—a symbol also favored by Norval Morrisseau and traced back to the cowry shell by Selwyn Dewdney. [1] Here, it serves as a radiant representation of the sun. Blazing in hues of red and orange, this celestial emblem is circumscribed by a ring of blue, an allusion to Kitche Manitou, the Great Spirit, and the harmonious balance of life's inherent dualities. From the sun radiate two distinct sets of lines. The smaller ones, forming an X, mark the universe's four cardinal directions. The second set, undulating threads that connect the loon to the embryonic young, symbolize both the sun's omnipresent energy and the sustaining force of Kitche Manitou.

1. Elizabeth McLuhan, Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1984), p. 53.

References: The best sources on Beardy’s life and work are Shirley Madill, et. al, Jackson Beardy: A Life’s Work, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1995) and Kenneth Janes Hughes, "Jackson Beady - Life and Art", Canadian Dimension, vol 14. no. 2, 1979. Rebirth, 1976 is in the collection Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and is illustrated in Hughes, 1979, cover and p. 3, as well as in Madill, 1995, p. 101 as Incubation [sic]. Additional information on the artist’s life and work can be found in Jacqueline Fry, Treaty Numbers 23, 287, 117: Three Indian Painters of the Prairies, exh. cat., (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1972). Curated by Jacqueline Fry, this was the first exclusively First Nations art exhibition to be held in a public art gallery in Canada. This institutional credibility gave a boost to their public profile and shortly after the three exhibitors (Beardy, Daphne Odjig, and Alex Janvier) would go on to form the Professional Native Indian Artists Association (later Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. or PNIAI) with other artists. For other examples with similar sun elements, see Wolf Family, 1976 and Two Songs, 1977, reproduced in Hughes, "Jackson Beady - Life and Art", 1979, p. 38. For forms with voids, see Flock, 1973, illustrated in Madill, Jackson Beardy: A Life’s Work, 1995, p. 101.