Ink on Animal Skin, Stretched within willow branch [Mixed Media],
approx. 85cm x 85cm (33" X 33") to approx. 100cm x 90cm (40" x 35")
Further Details on 3-D series
Anaglyph 3D glasses (Red and Blue Lenses) are required to view work in the 3-D Pelt series as the artist has intended.
There is a stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by means of encoding each eye's image using filters of different colours, in this case red and blue. The Anaglyph 3D drawings contain two slightly realigned and differently filtered coloured images, one for each eye. When viewed through the colour coded anaglyph glasses, each of the images reaches only one eye, revealing an integrated stereoscopic image created in the visual cortex of the brain fusing the image into one perception of a three dimensional composition.
Original Sketch for
“High Five at the Hunting Party”
Showing Final "Cartoon" in 2-D
Image Size - 33” x 33”
Ink on Cold Pressed Paper
( 80 cm x 80 cm)
2010
"Close-up View"on Stereoscopic image [preliminary drawing]
Image Size - 10” x 4”
Ink on Cold Pressed Paper
( 100 cm x 40 cm)
2010
All images Copyright © Andrew R. Hutchison 2000 - 2014
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Notes on Painting on animal skin as a Native Canadian Artistic Practice
Historic prairie native art and culture, as it developed in the 19th century, was a combination of First Nations and mainstream cultures - the product of post-contact European influences such as the horse and the gun which provided increased mobility and effectiveness in the buffalo hunt. These were the stories of the time, the story telling devices. It was their comic strips, if you'll forgive the analogy.
Art produced by the Bloods, the Blackfoot and the Assiniboine was similar in technique, materials to that of the subarctic and eastern neighbours. But, most native art produced by people living on the prairies was two dimensional and painting on hides was the major genre.
Some Natives lavishly painted their tipis with naturalistic and geometric motifs, or images of the hunt, made hides into maps, messages and records, and as a way of displaying images of elements of legend. There are examples of dream images on rawhide shields which might be said to be comparable to contemporary surrealistic paintings in visionary and aesthetic impact. Painted buffalo robes were another major art form.
Most Plains Tribes painted geometric or figural designs with natural pigments on elk, buffalo, and deer hides that would be used as robes or tepee walls. By the 1870s, hide artists developed pictorial styles and chose subjects that both affirmed native cultural identity and attracted an outside audience.
Skin is a complex and weighty subject that directly addresses issues of Native North American identity and history. The artists all wrestle with this engaging question of identity, each arriving at different places, but all contributing to an understanding of contemporary Native identity.
There is a double meaning at play here in ‘hide'. There is the actual material—hide —and the reference to that which is hidden, disguised and out of view. Loaded with meaning as well as misrepresentation, skin is part of our identity and a cover for our inner selves.
For History's Native people, skin encompassed an entire universe of meaning. Our own skin functions as a canvas that we can inscribe with messages about our identity or use as a shield to protect and hide our secrets. As a material, animal skin or hide has had a long history within Native culture. It is a symbolic reminder of historical misrepresentation, exploitation, and racial politics. Using both the material and concept of skin as a metaphor for widespread issues surrounding identity and personal, historical, and environmental trauma and perseverance. In these works, they interrupt our understanding of race, distort our perception of “skin,” and breach the artificial boundaries created by this potent subject matter. Rather than hiding difficult issues, they expose what is beneath the surface. These works have created a diverse collection of portraits that play with and challenge our notions about the representation of Native people.
Native Canadians have designed and decorated unique storytelling methods for thousands of years. Totem Poles likely to be the most recognize idea of this. But teaching and telling stories through a 'drawn' medium on a stretched animal hide (almost as if it were an artist's canvas) was in fact far more common practice.
Images of dangerous hunts, sights unseen and legends imagined we're placed down on these pelts. These pelt drawings are a quickly transportable, easily understood form of communication. Storytelling and image making are almost always attached. These images have always seemed very special to me.
There are a few beautiful examples of these works in numerous museums. The ROM has a particularly nice collection. They sadly didn't survive the test of time very well. But those that did are fantastic.
Example - Drawing/Painting on Stretched Beaver Pelt.
(A combination pictographic illustration of a map and imagery of 'the Hunt')
Native Canadian, circa 1850s.