Woodlands Style

The Woodland School Of Art, also named Woodlands style, Woodlands School, or Anishnabe painting, is a genre of painting among First Nations and Native American artists from the Great Lakes area - including northern Ontario and southwestern Manitoba. The majority of the Woodland artists belong to the Anishinaabeg - notably the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, as well as the Oji-Cree and the Cree. The style is also known as Legend Painting or Medicine Painting.

The style was founded by Norval Morrisseau, a First Nations Ojibwe artist from Northern Ontario, Canada. He learned Ojibwe history and culture primarily from his grandfather Moses "Potan" Nanakonagos and in the 1950s collected traditional narratives from his tribe. This oral history has provided inspiration and subject matter for his paintings, and he drew upon dreams and visions. Morrisseau said, "all my painting and drawing is really a continuation of the shaman's scrolls." Ojibwe intaglio, pictographs, petrographs rock art and birch bark scrolls, Wiigwaasabak, were stylistic antecedents of the Woodland style.

This visionary style emphasizes outlines and x-ray views of people, animals, and plant life. Colours are vivid, even garish. While Morrisseau painted on birch bark initially, the media of Woodland style tends to be western, such as acrylic, gouache, or watercolor paints on paper, wood panels, or canvas.

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