Each steady stroke is purposeful in this spidery, meandering distillation of fluid line and colour, entitled The Caller by Alex Janvier. The artist’s palette is deliberately restrained yet utterly dynamic: muted tones of deep magenta and sky blues gently clashing with bursts of vibrant oranges and calming greens.

Beginning in the 1960s, Janvier began exploring the tension between abstraction and representation, blending these elements to varying extents throughout his career. In The Caller, much of the work is abstracted but some elements are rooted in representation: the whiplashing tails that whip from the two central “bodies” resemble bulrushes or buffalo tails. The serrated motif located in the lower centre-right may be interpreted as a contemporary abstraction of the time-honoured adornments found on numerous objects and belongings of the Dene Suline artisans. Elsewhere in the work, the array of vibrant triangles, squares, chevrons, and lozenge shapes recall the colourful geometric artistry characteristic of the designs and motifs found throughout much of the imagery of the various nations of the Plains Indigenous peoples.

The Caller, with its creation in 1972, marks a pivotal moment in Janvier’s career. In this same year, Janvier, along with Jackson Beardy and Daphne Odjig, made a groundbreaking appearance at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Their exhibition, Treaty Numbers: 23, 287, 1171: Three Indian [sic] Painters of the Prairies, was a landmark event, being the first-ever exhibition dedicated solely to contemporary First Nations art in a Canadian public art gallery.