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Bedwash, Richard
Flying Spirit and Birds Esprit volant et oiseaux
1980 1980

“Flying Spirit and Birds” (1980) is an original acrylic painting by Richard Bedwash depicting an image of three interconnected figures: a female fanked by two birds. The bodies of all three figures are touching while suggesting a circular or cyclical motion as a gestural line pass through the beak of one bird, through the head of the female spirit in the middle, out her mouth then exits through the beak of the bird in front until it connects back to the female spirit’s base. Richard Bedwash’s style of Woodland painting employs Morrisseau’s x-ray imagery, which emphasise the internal organs and bone structure of each figure. In Bedwash’s “Flying Spirit and Birds” the figures are limbless, transfigured through their unified, collective embodiment. Flight is suggested as being a process of ancestral kinship through a continuous wheel of (re)birth, life, and death. The lines further suggest an interdependency between beings who necessitate each other’s ongoing mourishment or sustenance.

Bedwash, Richard
Long Lake 58 First Nation 1936-2007 Long Lake 58 First Nation 1936-2007
Flying Spirit and Birds Esprit volant et oiseaux
1980 1980
Acrylic on canvas Acrylique sur toile
60.8 x 60.4 cm
Gift of David Clare, 2019 Don de David Clare, 2019
62-014.02

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