Freda Diesing began her carving career at the age of forty-two and became the first Haida woman to make a living as a carver.  She later became an educator and one of her first students, master carver Dempsey Bob, dubbed her “Mother of Carvers” (Slade, 2002, p. 3). The present mask, executed in 1970 at the beginning of Diesing’s career, illustrates what would become the artist’s hallmark style: an elegant combination of stylization and naturalism. From the right brow sprouts the distinctive shape of a dorsal fin in red, hatched with cyan. Disciplined and crisp lines and colour — here in black and red, against the warm and stained alder — delineate the brows, nose, lips and goatee of the man. These features are generalized but not at the expense of character. Instead, there is a subtle and sophisticated compromise of a gentle human expressiveness and dignity. In the capable hands of Freda Diesing, the art of portrait masks achieved a capacity to inject what can only be described as an emotional element.

Literature: For examples of masks by Freda Diesing see First Arts, July 12, 2020, Lots 67- 69 (especially Lot 69). See also Peter Macnair et al, Down From the Shimmering Sky: Masks of the Northwest Coast (Seattle / Vancouver: Univ. of Washington Press, 1998), cat. 156; Daina Augaitis et al, Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery / Douglas & McIntyre, 2006), cat. 26 (ROM Collection); and Peter Macnair et al, The Legacy: Continuing Traditions of Canadian Northwest Coast Indian Art (Victoria: BC Provincial Museum, 1980), fig. 71. Robin K. Wright’s Northern Haida Master Carvers (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2001) discusses Diesing’s work and illustrates a portrait mask, print, and totem pole, pp. 323-326. See also Mary Anne Barbara Slade, Skilquewat: on the trail of Property Woman: the life story of Freda Diesing, PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2002.