Birds of various types appear frequently throughout Morrisseau’s long career, often as onlookers to divine events or as the central theme of a work. This configuration, wherein the forms of his birds overlay one another to crowd the centre of the painting, is likewise a stylistic convention that the artist often utilized to suggest closeness of the family of animals. This focus on nearness and intimacy is accentuated by omitting any superfluous descriptive details of their surroundings. In Bird Family, the warmth and grace of this avian family is brought out in soft and pleasant neutral tints of earthen browns and green. We sense that rhythm is fundamental to the artist: Morrisseau composes the birds, the hovering sun, and their divided circles in characteristic heavy, flowing black lines that seem to have no clear starting or endpoint. There is just a sense of never ceasing movement that directs our eye throughout all the elements of the picture.