Post #13: Review of an art gallery

Today I was lucky to stumble upon this online gallery of beautiful works by John Reuben, a self-taught Cree artist from Moosonee, Ontario. Most of his showcased paintings are done in acrylic paint on silk screens, although recently he's been known to experiment in other media (link). Mr. Reuben's favourite art subject appears to be scenes of Canadian wildlife and largely because of this combined with his almost photo-realistic style my first impression was that this wasn't really native art in its "authentic" or "traditional" sense. Yet it is obvious that through his "fine art" approach the artist is trying to convey a strong individual artistic identity in how he sees nature and his people's heritage which is perhaps somewhat different, in terms of media used, from other more representational, symbolic examples of Canadian indigenous folk art. But even though something like "Close Call-Loon" (painting pictured third from top) might not appear to a casual observer, from a different culture, (who I believe is largely the intended audience of this private gallery) as "traditional" Native American art, I sense that there is a strong cultural expression by the artist. When looking at the colour palette used one almost gets a feeling of seeing a snapshot of a particularly vivid dream or shamanistic meditation. Also almost every painting on the website reveals, either through its specific imagery or commentary provided by Mr. Reuben, a glimpse into an older culture that had great respect for nature because the livelihood of its people was so dependent on it.

All images of artwork taken from http://www.johnreuben.ca/