Hawk Totem Painting

My works are the engagement, exploration and celebration of stolen institutions, cultural practices and lost knowledge. They reflect my personal engagement as a Canadian with a diverse background; often conflicted between opposing cultural values. They explore the basis for political power within the nations of the Haudenosaunee. They celebrate personal discovery of lost, stolen or destroyed culture, by elevating icons of Haudenosaunee culture through the technology specific to the traditions of European or colonial nations. My current work is a series of paintings that celebrate and bestow a degree of heroism to the clan totems of the Six Nations. The clan totems represent both the basis for spiritual as well as secular belief within the culture of the Longhouse. They are a people whose violent past impelled them to create the world’s first representative democracy – the model for present day federalism. When Europeans first encountered the Haudenosaunee their minds were set free. It was the first time they had encountered freedom, democracy, or sexual equality. Here was a great nation yet there were no prisons or courts. And briefly, these people were happy. It was a state of mind encountered by Europeans as they moved out into the world and met people who didn’t share the same political philosophies. Benjamin Franklin wrote about how colonists who spend time with the Haudenosaunee were forever seduced by their lifestyle. They were generous with their knowledge, too. On a number of occasions they recommended the confederacy to the leaders of the thirteen colonies. Eventually the Americans took it to heart. But one of the things they overlooked was the link between the spiritual and the secular. Instead it is common in Western culture to separate church and state. To the chiefs of the Haudenosaunee it is as important to keep the two together. It is my proposal to exhibit three paintings from a series of nine large-scale paintings (72”x 108”) celebrating this nexus of spiritual and secular power. Central to this goal is to appropriate materials and style from the cannon of painting’s center and use them to further the goals of a culture that has been marginalized. They will be an aggregate of totemic iconography and op art style, and my aim is to explore and exploit the synergy, between these two potentials.