Norval Morrisseau, also known as Copper Thunderbird, was an Indigenous Canadian artist from the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation. He is widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada. Known as the "Picasso of the North," Morrisseau created works depicting the legends of his people, the cultural and political tensions between native Canadian and European traditions, his existential struggles, and his deep spirituality and mysticism. His style is characterized by thick black outlines and bright colors. He founded the Woodlands School of Canadian art and was a prominent member of the “Indian Group of Seven."
The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is Northern Ontario's largest art gallery specializing in the work of contemporary Indigenous artists. It is located on the campus of Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The Thunder Bay Art Gallery is the largest public gallery between Sault Ste. Marie and Winnipeg, featuring over 4,000 sq/ft of exhibition space.
Woodlands style, also called the Woodlands school, Legend painting, Medicine painting, and Anishnabe painting, is a genre of painting among First Nations and Native American artists from the Great Lakes area, including northern Ontario and southwestern Manitoba. The majority of the Woodlands artists are Anishinaabeg, notably the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, as well as the Oji-Cree and the Cree.
Portage College is a public board-governed community college in Lac La Biche, Alberta, Canada. Portage has seven campus locations throughout northeastern Alberta.
Jackson Beardy was an Indigenous Oji-Cree Anishinaabe artist born in Canada. His works are characterized by scenes from Ojibwe and Cree oral history and many focus on the relationship between humans and nature. He belonged to the Woodland School of Art and was a prominent member of the Indian Group of Seven. His work has contributed to the recognition of Indigenous contemporary art within Canada.
Eddy Cobiness, was a Canadian artist. He was an Ojibwe-Native Canadian and his art work is characterized by scenes from the life outdoors and nature. He began with realistic scenes and then evolved into more abstract work. He belonged to the "Woodland School of Art" and was a prominent member of the "Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporation", better known as the "Indian Group of Seven". He was a graphic designer who began drawing pictures of birds in sand, snow or on cardboard, in his childhood. In the 1950s, during his military service years, he discovered working in watercolour. He studied colour and composition. In the 1960s his ink and watercolour drawings were commercially successful, and he began his art career. For Cobiness, the life outdoors and nature always was subject of his works. He began with realistic scenes and then evolve into more abstract work, influenced by his art colleague at the time, painter Benjamin Chee Chee. He further developed his work unimpeded and worked with several styles, using many media. It would bring him international recognition. It is known that Queen Elizabeth II has work of Cobiness in her collection. Cobiness died in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on January 1, 1996, of complications from diabetes.
Triple K Co-operative Incorporated is a Canadian Native-run silk-screen company in Red Lake, Ontario that produced high quality limited editions of several artist within the Woodland School of Art from 1973 till the early 1980s. Now it is an online and bricks-and-mortar gallery in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Robert Houle is a Saulteaux First Nations Canadian artist, curator, critic, and educator. Houle has had an active curatorial and artistic practice since the mid-1970s. He played an important role in bridging the gap between contemporary First Nations artists and the broader Canadian art scene through his writing and involvement in early important high-profile exhibitions such as Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. As an artist, Houle has shown both nationally and internationally. He is predominantly a painter working in the tradition of Abstraction, yet he has also embraced a pop sensibility by incorporating everyday images and text into his works. His work addresses lingering aspects of colonialism and their effects on First Nation peoples. Houle often appropriates historical photographs and texts, repurposing and combining them with Anishnaabe language and traditionally used materials such as porcupine quills within his works.
Alexan Simeon Janvier was a First Nations painter in Canada. A member of the Indian Group of Seven, he helped pioneer contemporary Aboriginal art in Canada.
Joseph M. Sanchez is an artist and museum curator.
Carl Ray was a First Nations artist who was active on the Canadian art scene from 1969 until his death in 1978. Considered primarily a Woodlands Style artist. He was a founding member of the Indian Group of Seven. He began painting when he was 30 years old.
Daphne Odjig,, was a Canadian First Nations artist of Odawa-Potawatomi-English heritage. Her paintings are often characterized as Woodlands Style or as the pictographic style.
Susan Andrina Ross CM, was a Canadian painter, printmaker, and illustrator from Port Arthur, Ontario who is best known for her portraits of Native and Inuit peoples as well as Arctic landscapes. Her work is valuable both for its artistry and for its historical significance since she captured many images of a passing way of life. In 2002 she was awarded the Order of Canada in the Visual Arts.
Michelle LaVallee is a Canadian curator, artist, and educator. She is Ojibway and a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Cape Croker, Ontario. She has BFA (2000) and BEd (2004) degrees from York University in Toronto.
Carmen L. Robertson is a writer and scholar of art history and indigenous peoples. She was born in Balcarres, Saskatchewan, of Lakota and Scottish ancestry. She is Canada Research Chair in North American Art and Material Culture in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University. Before joining Carleton, Robertson was an associate professor in the Faculty of Media, Art & Performance at the University of Regina (2006-2012). She also served as the Indian Fine Arts department head at the First Nations University of Canada where she taught from 2000-2006. A number of Robertson's writings focus on the Aboriginal Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau. She is past president of the Native Heritage Foundation of Canada.
Morgan Wood is a curator and artist who is Stony Mountain Cree. Her family is from the Michel Callihou Band in Alberta and her great-grandmother was Victoria Callihou. Wood received a Bachelor of Indian Art from the First Nations University of Canada, at the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Rosalie Favell is a Métis (Cree/British) artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba currently based in Ottawa, Ontario, working with photography and digital collage techniques. Favell creates self-portraits, sometimes featuring her own image and other times featuring imagery that represents her, often making use of archival photos of family members and images from pop culture.
Ahmoo Angeconeb was a Canadian Ojibwe artist. His style was influenced by the Woodlands School, but incorporated elements from different cultures and artistic traditions. He travelled widely and found success as an artist in Europe as well as Canada.
Carol Podedworny is a Canadian museum director and curator who advocated for the inclusion of contemporary Indigenous art and for Indigenous voices in Canadian museums in a career spanning over 40 years. Besides post-contact First Nations art, she is interested in contemporary Canadian art, and a diverse range of art history and art, including its material practice. She is the author or co-author of many books, catalogues and essays which investigate these subjects, as well as issues of medical inquiry.
