“Mamatowisowin defines the methodology used in a quest for vision, where the seeker/artist begins to explore his/her own existence subjectively. By placing ones self into a direct stream of consciousness, the seeker/ the knower / the artist will begin to unfold a greater, inherent understanding of self, by utilizing the methodologies of Mamatowisowin.” Willie Ermine, Cree Scholar; First Nations Education in Canada ; The Circle Unfolds
In a traditional sense, natural elements from Mother Earth have always been our template for how we live, giving us stories or defining our culture, our rituals, our cycles, our sacred spaces and practices, our meaning for life. Here I use the grains from a slice of the inside time of a tree, the Standing People, plied flat and glued onto board, it is their creation that defines my voice, my work. This becomes a template into my mind’s eye, their spirit telling me what is; I am spiritually moved by this process of finding meaning from the insides of the tree. But in a contemporary sense; plywood, by its very creation, has its life of lines frozen for all time as plywood, its spirit ignored in hardware stores, used constructively to build homes, as a barricade against Mother Earth’s elements, or to prop us up away from the earth in beds and chairs and tables, holding us aloof from what sustains us.
The process of creating this work on wood is quite different from mainstream art, where the end is visualized then actualized in its completion. This ‘backwards’ way of painting evolves into what it will, unfolding a greater inherent understanding of what was always there, not planned out, but rather trusted, intuited, spontaneously instinctually found into being. I intuit the grains with brush, water and acrylic to find what my heart and mind are seeking; only sometimes am I deviating from which the tree grew. Transparently, layer after layer I am washing colours into its life, taking a deeper understanding, into what I am finding, as I am searching my soul layer after layer, in sensitivity to its being. I seek out wood panels for how their wood grain imagery resonates on my heart, spirit and mindful eye, but it is later when the imagery unfolds like a dreamscape, that I find meaning inside myself, from the spiritual places of that connection. I take a deeper step into the unknown every time I willingly fall into it.
I don’t want to limit what I will learn by stopping that flow with a prior mindset. It finds its footing in the universal flow and the Anishinabek holistic ways, which were inclusive of the whole human being in its equation. All these I impart into my work… so that it interacts holistically with the viewer; The painting is the visual HEART; The writing becomes the visual MIND; The Tree, the visual SPIRIT; And the viewer and I become the visual eye, connected like a mirror to the universe, from this reflective spirit of the physical eye.
The words come as an answer from a belief and feeling about the painting, abstractly in that deep searching place within. I learn from what I reposit, in grown imagery inside me and the tree simultaneously. I learn something more about my culture, about myself and about a mother’s earth as I flow with, what Kitchie-Manitou ~ The Great Mystery gives me. It is at this juncture that the work comes full circle and I find through faith and belief that I always knew or that I would find it. For this reason the painted insides of the Standing Tree is mounted next to the written insides of me; as I honour this collaboration of Creation with the meaning I am given.
“For the Cree, the phenomenon of mamatowan refers not just to the self but to the being in connection with happenings. It also recognizes that other life forms manifest the creative force in the context of the knower. It is an experience in context, a subjective experience that, for the knower, becomes knowledge in itself. The experience is knowledge.” Willie Ermine
I am in awe of the life of the tree, its language, a story all its own, a tongue of knowledge carried in a memory of its growing in droughts and rain, summers of sprouting, years of shade. Its language, could be rolled around in the palm of a hand, planted in the earth, and in your lifetime you could lay under its shade, perhaps hundred times your height, that one of your great ancestors had planted. And when I paint on these creations, I realize that each one is different. No grain, no tree is the same. We are all different and somewhat the same, but a forest lives together.
"I know it inside. "
LAURALEE K. HARRIS
“Process of self actualization… In their quest to find meaning in the outer space, Aboriginal people turned to the inner space. This inner space is that universe of being within each person that is synonymous with the soul, the spirit, the self, or the being. The priceless core within each of us and the processes of touching that essence is …. called inwardness.” Willie Ermine; Cree Scholar
LauraLee K. Harris draws from her Mixed Blood Anishinabe ancestry which originated in Winnipeg as Sioux, Cree, Chipewyan, Ojibwe, Oji-Cree, Assiniboine and Montagnais/French from her Mother and Irish/English from her Father.
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