IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO OTHER WORLDS, INNER WORLDS AND AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS!
Native American Images, Spirit World, Animal Kingdom, European Invasion, medicine men, sorcerers, p[rimordial truths, sacred centre at the heart of society, living in harmony with nature and the spirit realm, The Telling Of The World', the Four Names of the Earth, Old Creator & Young Creator, The Flood, The Deluge, Hierophany, The Other World, Seeing The Real World, Archetypal World, primordial mystery, Kachinas, the Sweat Lodge, Sun Dance Ceremony, Guardian spirit, Totem Animal, Potlatch
NATIVE AMERICAN SERIES
THE FALSE FACE SOCIETY (detail)
(80 x 100 cm) £659
The Native American Iroquois Tribe lived in longhouses in what is now called the Hudson River Valley in the 19th century. Their False Face Society was a society of healers. Their masks were living things that required care and nourishment. Native Indians created these masks from a dream about a mythological being. They could then be healed from a disease or sickness. They looked upon dreams as a guide to their lives.
The masks in this painting dont look anything like the real Iroquois Masks as these masks are sacred and should only be seen by people initatiated into certain traditions. However, I think we ourselves live in a False Face Society of a very different, secular kind and therefore the title of this painting expresses irony.
Our sons Elliott & Quinn by a longhouse in Victoria on Vancouver Island in June 2008
NATIVE AMERICAN SERIES
Native American tribes lived a life closely entwined with the spirit and animal world. Many of those cultures have been decimated, if not obliterated, by the onslaught of the European invasion. A great tragedy and a great loss of lives, skills and knowledge. Their medicine men try telling us that a society fragments if it loses its sacred centre. At heart Native American traditions are about primordial truths beyond historic context.
That the Native American religious traditions represent one of the world religions in the same way as, say, Hinduism is a relatively new concept in the Judaeo-Christian world. However, as the materialism and destructiveness of the modern world view is becoming more apparent, some people find themselves turning to Native American thinking for guidance on how to live in better harmony with the natural and spirit realms.
Here I would like to make an important point: because a lot of modern art lacks a spiritual dimension, many modern people ignore that dimension in traditional art as well, which is a mistake.
Our son Brendan by the totempoles in Stanley Park in Vancouver, May 2008
There exist wonderful poetic legends about the Creation of the world, in what Native Americans call 'The Telling of the World'. One striking fact is how certain themes appear that we recognise from the Bible (see Bible Series). Now here once again we should be very careful. It is easy to assume these stories found their way into Native American folklore as white settlers and missionaries introduced the natives to the Bible. As a matter of fact many of these Native American stories have been handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. They pre-date the Bible as we know it. These stories tell us how the world came into existence, how the animals preceded human beings in populating the earth. How people and animals keep their balance in relation to nature by showing respect for the earth and caring for the gifts of the sky and the earth.
FOOTFALLS FROM THE PAST (80 x 100 cm) £425
In the beginning Raven and Mink and Coyote helped the Creator plan the world. They were in on all the arguments! They decided which way the water in rivers should flow, that there should be bends in the rivers to create eddies where fish could stop and rest. They agreed that human beings would not live on earth forever. They would stay for a short time only, then their body returns to the earth and their spirit goes back to the Spirit World. All living things will be male and female. The Creator gave four names to the earth. Only a few people were allowed to know those names, as a privilige, for it gave them special spirit power. The names were for the sun, the rivers, streams and salt water, the third for the soil and the fourth for the forest. After some time everyone learnt the four names for the earth and people began talking to trees. Then Change came. The Change was a flood. When people saw the flood coming, they made a huge canoe. They loaded it with a couple of everything on earth. A male and female of every animal and plant. A child was born to the man and wife who had been in the canoe. Their child became the new Creator. Old Creator taught Young Creator what to do. He placed people all over the world in different locations. From then on people from different places spoke different languages.
The people created after the flood prophesied that a new language would be introduced one day. It will be the one and only language spoken by all people after the next Change. When people understand the language of animals - we will know that the Change is halfway. When people can talk to the forest - we will know that the change has come. The Flood was one Change. There will be another, but when, we don't know.
I have gone into this story in quite some detail because I have been reading up on stories about Creation and found common themes all over the world. There are striking and fascinating parallels with the stories that surround us in our culture.
Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, May 2008
One has to bear in mind that there are, of course, countless differences among the many tribal traditions of the Americas. Having said that, these are hierophanic cultures. The word 'hierophany' means, roughly, spiritual revelation. I.e. nature, features and creatures of nature manifest spirituality, truly are spiritual beings. Eagles, and many other animals, do not only bear spiritual significance but can in fact be manifestations of spirits themselves. For someone who has grown up in our culture this is a very difficult concept to grasp.
Top of Cowichan totempole on Vancouver Island in Canada, June 2008
For Native Americans, nature is the theatre in which the spirit realms and the human world intersect. Nature is where the higher realms can be seen in action, having effect.
(Please see the Masks Series as well, on sacred mask dances).
In Native American traditions, just as in other world religions, we find a visionary spirituality that affirms the existence of an 'Other World', an archetypal world that is 'more real', 'more alive' and more permanent than our physical world.
To quote a tribal leader called Yellowtail:
'A man's attitude toward Nature around him and the animals in nature is of special importance, because as we respect our created world, so also do we show respect for the real world that we cannot see'
This makes it clear that American Indian reverence for nature is not a matter of 'heathen idolatry', as some Christians once claimed. Nor is it about 'worshipping divinized nature' as anthropologists once tried to assert. Nature itself - untouched virgin nature - provides what one could call 'the tribal cathedral', a place for people to commune with spiritual truth and primordial mystery.
KACHINA REVELATION (80 x 100 cm) £495
The Hope tribe believed that some people die and are reincarnated again in another form in another world, while other people become Spirit Beings or Kachinas. The word Kachina derived from Ka (respect) and China (spirit). However, Kachinas are not only spirits of the dead, but spirits of animals, plants, minerals, stars and natural forces. They are invisible forces of life - not gods, but intermediaries or messengers. One of their chief functions is bringing rain, ensuring an abundance of crops and the continuation of life on earth.
American Indian people acknowledge that there are bad spirits as well as good ones, sorcerers as well as 'good medicine men'. Maybe there is a parallel here with the Christian teaching about fallen angels and good angels (see aslo the Medieval Series and the Tree of Life page). Then again, cultures all around the world acknowledge destructive forces as well as positive powers.
In American Indian traditions ancestors are revered for their gift to us, the people that inherited the world they shaped. This is not a cult of 'ancestor worship', but an awareness of the profound debt people of any tradition owe to those who shaped that tradition.
Totempole in Victoria on Vancouver Island, June 2008
I will now explain a few more concepts central to the Native American way of thinking.
In the ceremony of the Sweat Lodge a medicine man brings heated rocks into an enclosed space. The rocks represent primordial creation. He adds holy water to them so the lodge becomes hot and steamy. Those who enter the Sweat Lodge purify themselves by entering into this microcosm of primal elements: earth, fire, air and water. It reminds of the Scandinavian concept of a sauna - except the Finnish sauna doesn't quite offer the same spiritual dimension!
The Ceremony of the Sun Dance is held annually in the summer. A central pole is erected, representing the world axis, atop of which a buffalo skull is attached. The dancers go through an ordeal of fasting and dance around the pole, all offering up their prayers at the same time. The drum beats, representing the heart beat of the tribe and mankind. The dancers are all connected to the pole by an invisible cord penetrating their heart. The ceremony is about asking for blessings and harmony on earth. The Sun Dance is based on the concept of sacrifice, like rituals in many other world religions. Of course it remind of our tradition of dancing around a maypole to celebrate midsummer. (Read more about this and the 'Maiden's Dance' in Scandinavia in the Mazes & Labyrinths Series )
THE HOUSE OF THE BEAR AND THE SNAKE
Painting inspired by a healing Navajo picture
(30 x 30cm) £135
Native American people have a guardian spirit or totem animal, a spiritual guide and guard from birth. It's not unlike the Christian idea of a guardian angel. (See also the Siberian Series for Spirit Protectors). Guardian Spirits warn against bad actions and protect someone from harm.
The Kwakiutl tribe on the Pacific coast has the custom of 'Potlatch', in which a clan or clan leader will give away as many goods as he can. In this tradition superiority comes not from what one can accumulate, but from what one can give away! (Could our society learn something from this?!)
This painting was inspired by Anasazi twin petroglyphs. Other figures that make a frequent appearance in Southwest American rock art are the flute player and trickster, other humpbacked creatures, snakes (it seems that every mythology has its own serpent!) and spirals, butterflies and dragonflies, cloud terraces... The inventory is endless.
I don't think that this is the end of paintings inspired by Rock Art. Rock Art is art made by the first humans, it takes us right back to the cradle of human life as we know it. It has the power to move us and touch us even today, tens of thousands of years after it was made.
Please use this link to see more paintings inspired by Rock Art!
I will finish this page with a quote from a Native American called Lame Deer:
'What you see with your eyes shut is what counts!'
Imelda Almqvist, May 2006
(Last Updated: September 2010))
8 Small canvasses inspired by Rock Art in the American South West
£175 for set of 8
If you enjoyed this page, please consider adding a link to
Native American Traditions Arthur Versluis The Element Library 1994 ISBN 1-85230-572-X
The Telling of the World NATIVE AMERICAN STORIES AND ART Edited by W.S. Penn Stewart, Tabori & Chang New York ISBN 1-55670-488-7
Native American Images, Spirit World, Animal Kingdom, European Invasion, medicine men, sorcerers, p[rimordial truths, sacred centre at the heart of society, living in harmony with nature and the spirit realm, The Telling Of The World', the Four Names of the Earth, Old Creator & Young Creator, The Flood, The Deluge, Hierophany, The Other World, Seeing The Real World, Archetypal World, primordial mystery, Kachinas, the Sweat Lodge, Sun Dance Ceremony, Guardian spirit, Totem Animal, Potlatch
IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO OTHER WORLDS, INNER WORLDS AND AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS!
