This somewhat unusual subject is described by Marie Routledge, in the 1990 publication, Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, as dating to a period in the late 1960s wherein, "Pudlo's images of women become focused in a group of drawings that combine female* and angel imagery with playing-card motifs" [1]. Indeed, the busy, scalloped lines of Winter Angel recall the regalia of the courtesan cards in a standard French suit card deck. Using the face cards as pictorial precedent, Winter Angel is a rather majestic portrayal that displays this fantastical creature, with great, outstretched wings that are brilliantly decorated with a fevered matrix of lines.

Pudlo’s preoccupation with angels may be an example of syncretism. In Christianity, the angel figure is a winged, celestial intermediary that straddles between the earthly and heavenly realms. In the traditional, animist religion, shamans are believed to be able to transform into birds and other animals. What we may be seeing, then, is not an angel, but a shaman in the midst of his or her transformation.

Interestingly, the perilous descent does not seem to phase the figure, who smiles while it glides along, seemingly hoisted by two feathered fronds. The whole scene recalls the old British circus song, “He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease / A daring young man on the flying trapeze."

 1. Marie Routledge & Marion Jackson, “Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing”, [Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1990], p. 23

*Though the garb of the creature recalls female clothing, it may simply be a representation of ecclesiastical robes.