Artwork by Norval Morrisseau,  Loon Family

Norval Morrisseau
Loon Family

acrylic on paper
signed in syllabics lower left
30.75 x 22.75 ins ( 78.1 x 57.8 cms ) ( sight )

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Provenance:
Dr. Allan Torrie, Kenora
By descent to the present Private Collection, Kenora
An excerpt from Dr. Allan Torrie’s obituary in the Winnipeg Free Press (August 23, 2005):

His vocation as a family physician coincided with the beginnings of the self-help movement for alcohol addiction. This was also the period of new alcohol related health and social problems of the Anishinaabe people. Over time, his medical practice became focussed on emotional problems, psychiatric illnesses and alcohol and drug addiction problems as well as the delivery of health services in the community and province.

From the mid 1960s, and contrary to the received institutional approaches of the time, he fought for community-centered approaches to social problems. He directed an innovative pilot project of the Addiction Research Foundation targeting the rampant public drunkenness in Kenora with an approach that focused on self-help. This evolved, through the Anishinaabeg who had became involved, into the first Kenora Pow-Wow Club as a cultural approach to addictions. Later in the mid 1970s, he spearheaded an innovation, which has now become commonplace, to have the province fund an Anishinaabe healer as part of the Hospital services for the Kenora area. Later he worked as Medical Advisor to a program treating chronic solvent abusers with traditional therapies. He had been recognised as an Honorary Elder of Iskatewizaagegan and Wabaseemoon First Nations.

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Norval Morrisseau
(1931 - 2007) RCA, Order of Canada

Born in 1931 at Sandy Point Reserve, Ontario, Morrisseau was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts since 1970. Norval Morrisseau was the celebrated founder of the Woodland School, which revitalized Anishnabe iconography, traditionally incised on rocks and Midewiwin birchbark scrolls. A self-taught painter, printmaker, and illustrator, Morrisseau created an innovative vocabulary which was initially criticized in the Native community for its disclosure of traditional spiritual knowledge. His colourful, figurative images delineated with heavy black form lines and x-ray articulations, were characteristically signed with the syllabic spelling of Copper Thunderbird, the name Morrisseau’s grandfather gave him. Morrisseau completed many commissions during his career including the mural for the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1978 and, in 1980, received honourary doctorates from both McGill and McMaster universities. In 1995 Morrisseau was honoured by the Assembly of First Nations.