Copper Thunderbird, or Norval Morrisseau as he is better known, is one of my favorite artists. He was of Ojibwa descent and depicted traditional themes and stories in his works. This piece is my favorite of his. It is called “Artist and Shaman Between Two Worlds”. It was painted during a time of great personal struggle for the artist, which to me just speaks more to the depth of emotion and feeling within this piece.
It depicts the artist/shaman caught between 2 worlds, in the midst of transformation. I like the chaos of this painting. You really get the sense of walking the fine line between worlds. One half represents the Upperworld, and the other the Underworld. The Upperworld is a fiery pink, with spiked orbs that give the impression of shining suns or balls of light. The Underworld is a watery place, filled with fish and turtles. Strands of each world are crossing through the other, because they are never really separate, are they?
The thunderbird is prominent. He emerges from the artist/shaman himself. He comes forth from the top of the head, as if a visual representation of some aspect of the individual’s psyche. The wings are a two-headed serpent. It is the epiphany of the Upper and Underworlds melding into a single entity, caught between two planes of existence.
Who are the other figures, I wonder? Are they different representations of the shaman/artist? Are they spirits? What is the significance of the hooded figures in black, as opposed to the shapeshifters in the foreground? There are other creatures, too. Birds and small mammals, it looks like. Traditional art throughout the Americas generally associates shamans with the ability to shapeshift into particular animals.
It’s the association of the artist with the shaman that attracts my attention to this piece. It just seems so right and natural to me that the two would be the same, though it had never occurred to me until I came across this painting. The artist transcends this world during the creation of art, in a way. The same way the shaman slips into an alternative mental state of being, the artist has the same ability in her/his own way. Morrisseau himself was schooled in the ways of the shaman by this grandfather, and was given the name Copper Thunderbird by a medicine woman after recovering from a fatal illness at 19. This painting clearly has personal meaning to the artist. However, no artist intends for their work to belong only to them.
The shaman is an intermediary between the spiritual world and the material world. So, too, is the artist (as well as many other types of special people). “I say to the shaman, ‘I too came into this world to beautify the world with color’.”, Copper Thunderbird once said. There is a special gift, a special power, to have the ability to move between worlds.
-The Court Jester
The Court Jesters 