| Jackson Beardy | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 24, 1944 Garden Hill Reserve, Island Lake, Manitoba, Canada |
| Died | December 7, 1984 (aged 40) Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Field | Painting |
| Training | Self taught |
| Movement | Woodland School of Art and Indian Group of Seven. |
Jackson Beardy (Garden Hill First Nation Reserve, Island Lake, Manitoba, Canada, July 24, 1944 - December 7, 1984, Winnipeg, Manitoba) was a Canadian artist. He was an Anishinini-Indian and his works are characterized by scenes from the holy stories of his people. He belonged to the "Woodland School of Art" and was a prominent member of the “Indian Group of Seven”. He is also the father of the famous Mach 3 commercial model, Amanda V. "Beardy".
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Beardy was raised by his grandmother, from whom he's learned the rich history and sacred stories of his ancestors. He attended residential school at Portage la Prairie at the age of sixteen. Beardy quickly distanced himself from the forced nature of education that all Indians in that area underwent at the residential schools, and it was from these lessons that he began to assert his “Indianness”. Interestingly, Beardy did benefit from his education at the boarding school, as it was there that he learned to draw and paint. Beardy then went on to graduate from Commercial Art at Tech Voc High School and then finished his education at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Manitoba.
In 1972 Jackson Beardy, Alex Janvier and Daphne Odjig held a joint exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It was called "Treaty Numbers 23, 287, 1171" a reference to the treaty numbers that the Canadian government gave to the indigenous groups which they had concluded treaties. From this exhibition grew a group of indigenous (Native) Canadian artists who named their selves the "Professional Native Indian Artists Association” in 1973. This is better known as the "Indian Group of Seven”, including alongside Jackson Beardy also Alex Janvier, Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, Carl Ray, Eddy Cobiness en Joseph Sanchez. This group combined forces to promote their work into the world of western art. They were committed to indigenous control of indigenous art and to change the way the world looked to this art. A shift from an emphasis on "indigenous" to "Artistic” value.
From 1982 through 1983, Jackson Beardy was senior arts advisor to the Federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development now Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. He helped to make a methodological shift from the anthropological to the aesthetic evaluation of “Native art”. He worked tirelessly to lay the institutional and activist political foundations, which would help future generation of First Nations artists.
Jackson Beardy died on December 7, 1984 in Winnipeg, Manitoba to complications after a heart attack.
Although Beardy's early work often narrates specific legends, his mature art expresses fundamental cosmological and spiritual concepts such as balance in nature, regeneration and growth, and the interdependence of all things. His distinctive graphic style is characterized by precisely defined flat areas of warm colour and curving ribbons of paint.
Cateogry:20th-century First Nations painters