31 Facts About Norval Morrisseau

Norval Morrisseau is widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.

Norval Morrisseau's style is characterized by thick black outlines and bright colors.

An Anishinaabe, Norval Morrisseau was born March 14,1932, on the Sand Point Ojibwe reserve near Beardmore, Ontario.

Norval Morrisseau's grandmother, Veronique Nanakonagos, was a devout Catholic and from her he learned the tenets of Christianity.

At the age of six, Norval Morrisseau was sent to a Catholic residential school, St Joseph's Indian Residential School in Fort William, Ontario.

Norval Morrisseau left the school when he was ten, preferring to learn from elders rather than continuing his formal education.

Norval Morrisseau spent much of his time listening to elders, drawing, fishing, hunting, picking berries, and trapping.

Norval Morrisseau was taken to a doctor but his health kept deteriorating.

Norval Morrisseau recovered after the ceremony and from then on always signed his works with his new name.

Norval Morrisseau contracted tuberculosis in 1956 and was sent to Fort William Sanatorium to recover.

In 1972, Norval Morrisseau was caught in a hotel fire in Vancouver and suffered serious burns.

Norval Morrisseau converted to the apostolic faith and started introducing Christian themes in his art.

Norval Morrisseau was assigned an extra cell as a studio and was allowed to attend a nearby church.

Norval Morrisseau joined the Eckankar movement in 1976 and gave up drinking.

Norval Morrisseau connected Eckankar's emphasis on soul travel through the astral planes to his traditional Ojibway teachings.

Norval Morrisseau was the founder of a Canadian-originated school of art called Woodland or sometimes Legend or Medicine painting.

Norval Morrisseau's work was influential on a group of younger Ojibwe and Cree artists, such as Blake Debassige, Benjamin Chee Chee, and Leland Bell.

Norval Morrisseau spent his youth in remote isolation in northern Ontario, near Thunder Bay, where his artistic style developed without the usual influences of other artists' imagery.

In 1978, Norval Morrisseau was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

Norval Morrisseau was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Norval Morrisseau was unable to paint due to his poor health.

Norval Morrisseau was buried after a private ceremony in Northern Ontario next to the grave of his former wife, Harriet, on Anishinaabe land.

Norval Morrisseau was honoured with a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award during the NAAF Awards show in 2008.

Norval Morrisseau developed his own techniques and artistic vocabulary that captured ancient legends and images that came to him in visions or dreams.

Norval Morrisseau was originally criticized by the native community because his images disclosed traditional spiritual knowledge.

Norval Morrisseau is acknowledged to have initiated the Woodland School of native art, where images similar to the petroglyphs of the Great Lakes region were now captured in paintings and prints.

Norval Morrisseau was inspired by sacred Anishinaabe birch bark scroll images.

Norval Morrisseau produced art depicting Christian subjects: during his incarceration, he attended a local church where he was struck by the beauty of the images on stained-glass windows.

Norval Morrisseau engaged in more direct intervention, identifying fake and forged works available for sale, particularly those purported to be painted by him in the so-called "70s style".

Norval Morrisseau wrote to galleries and made sworn declarations identifying items being sold as "fakes and imitations".

The courts found that the Maslak-McLeod Gallery, a vendor of works attributed to Norval Morrisseau, had acted fraudulently.