wahkohtowin series

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buffalo flow warrior scroll - acrylic on canvas abstract painting by Native Canadian painter Winter Brown

nia wonderful with ghost dragon - abstract acrylic painting on canvas or giclee print by Native American artist Winter Brown

rattlesnake wahkohtowin - acrylic painting with vintage zoological drawing on canvas by contemporary Native American artist Winter (Bebonkwe) Brown

kait wahkohtowin with grey zigzag - acrylic painting with vintage zoological drawing on canvas by contemporary Native American artist Winter (Bebonkwe) Brown

entwined serpent wahkohtowin - acrylic painting on canvas by First Nations artist Winter Brown

black snake wahkohtowin - acrylic painting on canvas by First Nations artist Winter Brown

snake & spiro 1 - acrylic painting on paper by First Nations artist Winter Brown

snake & spiro 2 - acrylic painting on paper by First Nations artist Winter Brown

stag, octopus & spirals - 11 x 11" neo-Indigenous blue acrylic painting

please email Winter@Winter-Brown.com for availability, pricing & prints

Wahkohtowin is a Plains Cree word that expresses the state of being in good relationship with all of our relations, including our animal & plant relatives and the Universe on all levels.

I’ve always had deep rapport and relationships with both wild and domestic animals. At times I’ve made my living working with both horses and dogs. I also have deep connections with certain animals through dreams and cultural ceremonies.

The animals in this series honor some of those I have such connections to, have considered family, hold important symbolism, or I have particular admiration and/or concern for due to endangerment.

Flowers are another recurring subject and element present in my creative practice. To me they epitomize the sensuality and healing power expressed and offered by the land.

I’ve been including plants and animals in my work in a variety of ways throughout the years of my practice.  As a child I spent hours watching animals, especially horses, and also looking at zoological books and encyclopedias. I also spent hours copying the zoological drawings in those books.

In this series I continu3 this childhood occupation in a slightly different way. Some years back I began gathering vintage zoological and botanical drawings, and it quickly became as close to compulsion as my childhood drawings were. Not surprisingly I soon began including this imagery in some of my paintings.

The irony of my engagement with these drawings is part of the series. The images are colonial and pre-colonial era zoological drawings predominantly made by male Western European scientists and zoological artists during periods of early European contact, Indian wars and the reservation era. They were made as part of colonial expansion, in the name of Western science, to record species whose home territories were beginning to be jeopardized as part of that damaging culture and mind frame, in the same era that a parallel and inseparable genocidal process was being perpetrated on Native people.

Despite the colonial mandate they are inextricable from, I find these drawings contain a particular beauty that lies in a combination of elements, including an unaffectedness resulting from not being created as ‘art’, a desire for meticulous accuracy executed via the skill of the drawers, and an inherent human love for the animals they depict.

Given the period of their creation and the pervasive paradigm of dominion over and separateness from the natural world, how much that love and connection was consciously acknowledged (or not) within this scientific dynamic remains a mystery. This possibly unintentional expression of love, present despite unhealthy colonial era cultural relationship with the natural world, fascinates and draws me in as much as the animals themselves, adding another ironic, poetic, cultural element.

I’m adept at making figurative drawings, especially after spending years at it in my youth, and don’t use these drawings due to lack of drawing skills. Though early in my practice my enjoyment of creating figurative realism diminished, my impetus in using Western archival drawings (and other visual elements of Western culture) lies as much in making a wry statement about the dynamics of cultural inundation and appropriation.

After years of having our cultural practices demonized, illegalized and all but obliterated, Non-Native appropriation of elements of Native culture has now become a serious and damaging issue and dynamic. Colonial culture is nothing if not one of indiscriminate ‘taking’.

Another expression of it is the rampant artist-on-artist appropriation that has been normalized within the Western art world, despite the negative impacts it often has on the ‘victim’ artists. I’ve had my own work appropriated and know how damaging it can be (ironically and sadly the deepest and most impactful appropriation has been done by my contemporary Native artist peers, a thing I understand to be another expression of the impacts and inundation of colonial paradigms).

At the same time, the colonial process has forcibly immersed Native people in Settler culture, and with that, Settler iconography and imagery. My ‘taking’ and inclusion of Settler cultural imagery within my artworks comments on the unique experience of this forced immersion. It pointedly expresses a very different experience and dynamic than when a Non-Native person appropriates Native imagery.

I’ve long called this element of my work ‘positive reverse appropriation’ and, like the reverent/irreverent paradox it contains, is also a recurring element in my practice, as is the transmutation of dysfunctional and damaging colonial elements & impacts into artworks that represent healing.

The sacred geometry in this series is another recurring element aligned with healing that I’ve been exploring and incorporating into my work for many years. This began while living in the UK in the 1990’s, when I took a deep dive into pre-Christian Pagan culture and crop circle phenomenon and imagery. This exploration was centered on and expanded my initial intuitive understanding of their alignment with Indigenous culture. As part of this journey I undertook much research and travelled to numerous ancient sacred sites in both the South of England and Scotland, as well as to crop circle sites. I also receiving teachings from Wiccan culture carriers.

The painted washes that are the visual grounds for this series are a foundational part of my painting practice that are present throughout different artwork series. In addition to creating a visual richness and a unique aesthetic in the context of acrylic painting, they speak to a deep cultural relationship to water and storms, and both the washes and the way I layer them are yet another representation of healing from layers of colonially related traumas, as well as the layered and non-linear nature of healing processes.