Born in an igloo on October 3, 1927 east of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Kenojuak Ashevak charmed Canadians and the rest of the world with her unique vision and keen sense of design. Kenojuak began to draw in 1957 at the encouragement of James Houston and became one of the best-known Inuit artists of her time. Like most Inuit graphic artists, she relied on the considerable skills of print shop staff to transfer her drawings into print.
In her first retrospective in over two decades, The Drawings and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition spanned over forty years of Daphne Odjig’s artistic career and featured over fifty of her works, including examples of history paintings, murals, legend paintings, erotica, abstractions, and landscapes. Together these pieces communicate the breadth of Odjig’s engagement with her personal, political and cultural history.
Sheet1 Explore Although they are worlds apart, Chinese artists from Huxian, Jinshan, and Qijiang and Canadian artists from Baker Lake and Cape Dorset share a common bond; their art depicts their concerns about nature, spirituality, and their ever-changing social environments. After touring throughout China, the exhibition, a collection of thirty-two colourful Chinese drawings and eighteen Canadian Inuit drawings made its first North American appearance at the McMichael.
A Brush with War: Military Art from Korea to Afghanistan included artworks dating from 1947 to 2008. The production of Canadian war art started in 1916 with the implementation of the Canadian War Memorials Fund which, by 1918, had produced over 800 works. These were subsequently shown in England, the United States, and Canada. The Second World War (1939-1945) brought another program, the Canadian War Records.
Yousuf Karsh, the iconic Canadian photographer known for his portraits of prime ministers, presidents, movie stars, authors, philosophers, scientists, artists, popes, and other luminaries of the twentieth century, was also a commercial and industrial photographer. The Yousuf Karsh: Industrial Images exhibition was a culmination of Karsh’s industrial and commercial work with Ford of Canada, Atlas Steel in Welland, Ontario, and Sharon Steel in Pennsylvania, and a variety of other commercial images.
When you think of traditional Northwest Coast art, you think of beautifully carved and painted totem poles, masks, bentwood boxes, canoes, and jewellery—decorated with traditional mythological creatures such as thunderbirds and sisiutls. What you don’t expect to see is a silver bracelet carved with the image of a raven flying away with a Starbucks cup, or a raven affixed to a wooden Celtic cross.
The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Margaret Atwood's best known book of poems, inspired by the writing of Susanna Moodie, was published in a limited edition format with Charles Pachter's interpretive graphic works in the 1980s. The marriage of graphic work with literary text created a unique art form, the livre d'artiste. The exhibition explored the unique collaboration between these two artists.
Winnipeg artist Diana Thorneycroft is known for creating provocative and controversial photographs that challenge her audience’s viewing experience. Her seemingly comical images composed of innocent subjects—dolls and toy figurines—and set against the landscapes of the Group of Seven and their contemporaries reveal, upon a closer examination, a deeper and darker meaning.
In Inuktitut, the word Nunannguaq translates into “in the likeness of the earth,” which refers to a complex system used (like a map) to record ancient pathways. While travelling across the vast northern territories, the Inuit were guided by maps imprinted in the community’s collective memory rather than on skin or ivory.
This exhibition features works by Maurice Cullen together with those of some of his contemporaries, James Wilson Morrice and William Brymner, and the future generation of artists he inspired, including his stepson, Robert Pilot, and future member of the Group of Seven, A. Y. Jackson.
Tom Forrestall’s images of Atlantic Canadian rural landscapes are infused with a mystical, transcendent and fascinating quality. Magic Realism—an artistic movement in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic or “normal” setting—is an imprecise term that has often been used to classify Forrestall’s art. Rather, his naturalistic adaptation combines reality, poetry, and a metaphysical dimension that transcends a spiritual and emotional energy to the viewer.
The Woodland School exhibit examined the vibrant art of Woodland School painters Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, Carl Ray, Alex Janvier, Blake Debassige, Saul Williams, Martin Panamick, and Goyce Kakegamic and other Woodland School artists. The Woodland School style of painting was popularized through the work of Norval Morrisseau who caught the attention of the art-buying public with his first exhibition at the Pollock Gallery in Toronto in 1962.
