In this mid-1980s canvas by Norval Morrisseau, the composition centres on the clear profile of a human face, its elongated neck and tilted angle lending the figure a sense of monumentality and dignity. The contours that define the work unfold in Morrisseau’s characteristic black lines — broad, confident, and calligraphic — lines so fluid they feel coaxed from the surface, as if revealed by the artist rather than drawn. They travel without a fixed beginning, carrying the viewer’s eye in an unbroken circuit around the form.

Features move into one another with an ease that feels elemental. The parted lips swell into the nose, glide upward through the forehead, and return along the curve of the face before drifting into the arc of the neck. From there the lines slip into the curling locks of hair or extend outward into Morrisseau’s connecting currents, carrying the eye downward to the fish that support the figure or upward to the shamanic protrusions at the rear of the head. Morrisseau employed these same protruding forms in other works, where they signal transformation, visual cues of spirit breaking through the human frame.

Ever the consummate colourist, Morrisseau makes colour a driving force of the present canvas, producing an immediate visual intensity. Two tones of purple define the head and neck, punctuated by saturated primaries in the eye and vivid pink, orange, and red in the protrusions. The fish forms are composed largely of greens, paired with the same hues that animate the shaman, creating a chromatic dialogue across the surface. Morrisseau’s genius lies in this balance: what first appears as the spontaneous application of colour reveals itself as both expressive and exacting, a system entirely his own.

ND

Reference: Protrusions of a similar nature can be seen in Norval Morrisseau, Man Changing into Thunderbird, 1977, Acrylic on canvas, six panels: each panel 153.5 x 125.7 cm, Private collection, on loan to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. For the convention of “connecting lines, see Lister Sinclair and Jack Pollock, The Art of Norval Morrisseau, (Toronto: Methuen Publications, 1979).