Family is a concept that reaches beyond the nuclear family to include Mother Earth. Morrisseau paints images of his family, but his paintings of family extend to all living things. Morrisseau often paints Mother Earth and at times places himself in relation to her.
This work from 1973 is a self-representation of the artist within his environment. When it was sold in 1977 in Montreal the title of the work was Wheel of Life. The circular enclosure recalls a work Morrisseau painted of himself within the womb of Mother Earth.
Norval Morrisseau, The Artist and His Environment or Wheel of Life, 1973.
Norval Morrisseau, Artist in Union with Mother Earth, 1972.
In Artist in Union with Mother Earth, the artist creates a circular form of intertwined bodies in coitus. In this way Morrisseau links his body to the fertility of all living things–Mother Earth–in a way that conveys relationality of family ties as all encompassing.
Curator Greg Hill hung these three works of art next to each other in Morrisseau’s retrospective exhibition to spark visual conversations about land and water as our relations.
Norval Morrisseau, Androgyny, 1983.
Androgyny is a celebration of life. Morrisseau painted this large mural to promote the interconnected relations to all living beings and remind Canadians of the need to care for the land and all living beings. In 1983, Morrisseau contacted Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and offered this work as a gift to all Canadians. The work, however, languished in the Indian Affairs lobby for twenty years, with little acknowledgement of this generous offering.
Morrisseau had a close relationship with his mother’s father, Moses Potan Nanakonagos, who imparted much of his knowledge on the young artist. Many of the stories shared with Morrisseau are described in his book Legends of My People: The Great Ojibway (1965).
Morrisseau paints his grandfather and other members of his family, including his wife, his children, and his grandchildren, throughout his career.
My grandfather was the most influential person in the whole of my life. He was a mythman, the shaman.
Norval Morrisseau, Art of Norval Morrisseau, 1979, p.41.
This quote by Norval Morrisseau is read by Logan Fiddler, great-grandson of Norval Morrisseau, 2023.
My Grandfather was the first to believe in me.
Norval Morrisseau, Art of Norval Morrisseau, 1979, p. 46.
This painting expresses Morrisseau’s changing ideas about spirituality. The left panel shows his grandfather, Moses Potan Nanakonagos, who embodies mino bimaadiziwin, or living a good life. Separated from his grandfather in the right panel is a young Morrisseau, respectfully explaining to his grandfather his ties to all living beings but with new spiritual teachings that enter this panel from the upper right side. These beings are linked to the artist’s outstretched with a line that conceptualizes his acceptance of Eckankar teachings–communicated clearly by including a circular energy bundle with the Eckist mantra HU.
Norval Morrisseau, The Storyteller: The Artist and His Grandfather, 1978.
Morrisseau’s grandfather, Moses Potan Nanakonagos, his mother Grace’s father, was a Mide shaman and an important role model who shared teachings and stories with him.
This drawing, completed late in Morrisseau’s career, continues to use line to communicate intergenerational storytelling.
Norval Morrisseau, Grandfather Sharing Stories with All Living Beings, 1989.
Norval Morrisseau, Sacred Medicine Bear, 1974.
This painting of a sacred bear is also a painting about family. Morrisseau uses his visual storytelling language to paint a sacred bear that connects to a story that Morrisseau’s grandfather Moses Potan Nanakonagos shared with him about his ancestor, Little Grouse.
The sacred bear is important to Morrisseau as it appeared during his vision quest.
My grandfather on my father’s side was Little Grouse and at the time of his fasting year had a great medicine dream, ‘My son, I will be a guardian to you and give you some special power. Although you will not be a conjurer or a medicine man, still you shall have power to do good. I will give you good luck, but you must respect me in my earthly form and never kill me. Now I will go into your body.’ According to that medicine dream my grandfather believed there was a bear inside his body. He felt its presence at his back, or hip.
Norval Morrisseau, Legends of My People: The Great Ojibway, 1965, p. 45.
Morrisseau paints the giant sacred bear late in his career. Living on the west coast, Morrisseau places the white bear nestled in the mountains. A family, situated below the bear and mountains, is involved in ceremony within a tent, surrounded by ancestral figures.
Norval Morrisseau, Grandfather Tells of Giant Bear, 1992.
(Clockwise from top left) Harriet, Norval, Eugene, and Victoria Morrisseau photographed in Toronto
During an exhibition at the Pollock Gallery in October 1963. Morrisseau and his family, including Harriet, Victoria, and baby Eugene, arrived at the gallery and helped activate sales of his work. This photo was taken in 1963 by a Globe and Mail photographer, but it did not appear in the paper until January 27, 1965 in connection with a story about Morrisseau's art written by the Globe and Mail art critic Kay Kritzwiser. In an effort to explain the artist, she provides a demeaning description of him: "Morrisseau's power to link the world of his ancestors with the conflicting modern world puzzles the young painter."
Norval Morrisseau, Artist's Wife and Daughter, 1975.
Morrisseau painted this portrait of his wife Harriet with their young daughter as a companion work to a self-portrait as shaman.
Norval Morrisseau, Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter, Victoria), 1965.
Norval and Harriet's first born, their daughter Victoria, was the subject of several paintings and drawings by Morrisseau.
Norval Morrisseau, Artist's Three Sons, 1975.
Norval Morrisseau, Human Mother and Bear Man Offspring, c. 1970.
Morrisseau often painted and drew a mother nursing a bear child and a human child. His original design for a mural chosen for one of the exterior walls of the Indians of Canada Pavilion for Expo 67 in Montreal, QC included an image similar to this one. The Expo 67 image, however, was censored by government officials, and in the end Cree artist Carl Ray completed the amended pavilion mural, changing the original design by turning the boy and bear cub away from their mother’s breasts. In its final conception, the dedication, “In Honour To My Grandfather Potan Nanakonagos And To Our Ancestors”, signed with Morrisseau’s syllabic signature Copper Thunderbird, was maintained to acknowledge the importance of intergenerational stories in Morrisseau’s art.
Saul Williams discusses the bond that is created between the land, the mother, and the child when everything to feed and clothe the child came from the land.
... There was no store, there was no place to buy formula, there was no place to buy Pampers. Everything came from the land and that’s what’s happening here. The mother is raising her child with her breast… The child becomes stronger because of natural milk.