| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Linda Red Hawk, born to an Anishanabe mother from Kipawa, PQ and an Italian-Canadian father, grew up in Vancouver’s East End. Even as her mother struggled with alcoholism and addiction, she supported her little girl’s love of art. At age 16, Red Hawk left home and took a bus to Calgary to forge a new beginning. She ultimately became an artist and a yoga teacher. As her art developed, Red Hawk realized how profoundly the environment of the Albertan foothills and mountains sustained her. A crucial part of moving forward in her new life and reclaiming her First Nations ancestry was changing her name. ‘Red Hawk’ was given to her in a vision.
Spirituality and the visionary traditions of Indigenous peoples are central themes in her art. Red Hawk honours visionary experience and creativity. Although she took some courses in sculpture at the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta College of Art + Design), she preferred to tap the resources of her Native traditions. Each work begins with a vision. The basic medium of Red Hawk’s wall pieces is paper pulp, soaked for three days and coloured with light-fast dye. She incorporates the beauty of the natural world by adding petals, fur, bark, seeds and moss, all of which become part of the paper. When the paper is ready to be worked, she casts forms from modeling clay, painting on the resulting surface. The unity of spirituality and the natural world is evident in her large mixed media wall pieces.
As an emerging artist, her work was selected for the Alberta 1999 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art alongside Joane Cardinal-Schubert and Jane Ash Poitras. Her work is held in private and corporate collections and in the collection of Alberta Foundation for the Arts. |