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Spirit of the Mighty Thunderbird

Print – Spirit of the Mighty Thunderbird

In Anishinaabe cosmology, Thunderbird is a powerful spirit being who carries messages from the Creator. Lightning flashes when he opens his eyes and thunderclaps sound when he beats his wings. In this 1968 print, Daphne Odjig’s Thunderbird is rendered in a graphic, two-dimensional perspective using saturated colours and strong black form lines—elements associated with the Woodland School of Indigenous painting that emerged in Canada in the late 1960s. Odjig’s unique interpretation of this style hints at her early fascination with Picasso, appearing to blend some of the techniques of cubism with others typically seen in ancient pictographic art.

Daphne Odjig

Daphne Odjig was born in 1919 on Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She gained recognition in the 1960s for a series of ink drawings documenting daily life in a Cree community in northern Manitoba. An innovative and self-taught artist, she developed several distinctive visual styles over the course of her lengthy career and explored a wide range of historical, political, and mythological subject matter.

Odjig established the New Warehouse Gallery—Canada’s first Indigenous-owned gallery and a gathering place for Indigenous artists—in Winnipeg in 1974. She also co-founded Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporated with artists Jackson Beardy, Alex Janvier and others. Commonly known as the Indian Group of Seven, the collective did not last long but helped bring First Nations art into the broader Canadian art scene.

Odjig was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1986 and received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2007. The National Gallery of Canada presented a retrospective exhibition of her work in 2009. Odjig died in Kelowna, British Columbia, in 2016.