John Brady McDonald held an artist talk and workshop in Melfort on Saturday. (Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW Staff)

By Cam Lee

Artist Talk and Workshop

Melfort Arts Council hosts artist talk and workshop with John Brady McDonald

Sep 23, 2024 | 12:08 PM

A one-day art workshop in Melfort on the weekend brought many heavy topics to the forefront.

Artist and writer John Brady McDonald gave a presentation of his Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils (OSAC) Exhibition “Omentum” at the Kerry Vickar Centre, where he explained his paintings and the process involved. The event was organized by the Melfort Arts Council.

Omentum “talks about the Indigenous experience of Saskatchewan and Canada in the 21st Century,” McDonald told northeastNOW. “Using my art and the skills that I’ve been able to attain, and to tell that narrative, to tell that story in a way that is more contemporary and more lyrical in a sense that it’s not just the doom-and-gloom.”

McDonald said his exhibition is easy to understand and shares the experiences that Indigenous people have faced. McDonald went through his paintings individually with the audience in attendance, getting their feedback and feelings on his work and the subject material.

“Trying to share what I was feeling when I painted it, the message I’m trying to convey with it, and what the narrative is in the 21st Century as Indigenous people.”

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Many of the themes involved with McDonald’s work bring about heavy emotions. They include Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, the residential school experience, the killing of Colten Boushie, cultural appropriation, and the fractured and contentious nature of reconciliation.

McDonald said his work also focuses on the beauty in what Indigenous people are achieving including the recognition of LGTBQ people and the return of facial tattooing.

“Being able to share a lot of those positive experiences we as Indigenous people face and continue to embrace,” said McDonald.

He said his work showcases all those emotions and experiences in a bold, bright manner akin to artists Noral Morrisseau and Pablo Picasso. The work features bright colours and abstract portraiture, and McDonald said his use of shapes and lines are used in a way to make a person think and react.

John Brady McDonald’s art displayed at the Sherven-Smith Art Gallery at the Kerry Vickar Centre. (Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW Staff)

“Either they’re going to react with joy or with tears, with anger or with pain, but they’re going to react.”

McDonald said the artist talk he held certainly had some tears, which happens when you deal with heavy subjects like residential schools, children being taken, loss of culture, disease, and death.

“There (were) a lot of tears, and a lot of…‘what can we do going forward’, and so you’re planting the seeds of advocacy, and allowing going forward to be able to take that story that they’ve heard and share it with someone else, and plant the seeds of allyship and tolerance” said McDonald, who added there was a lot of great dialogue and discussion at the workshop.

(Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW)

McDonald painted the exhibition prior to the pandemic and his first showing was scheduled for April of 2020. He told northeastNOW he hasn’t personally seen the paintings in a couple of years, and his stop in Melfort was the first time he’d seen them in a gallery setting.

“It was like my children were gone and I’m visiting my children again,” he said.

Sharing with an audience what he was feeling when he created his art is important to McDonald, who said people have many different interpretations of his art. He said that doesn’t take anything away from what he envisioned while he was painting.

He hoped everyone enjoyed the experience at the workshop, where he outlined his work and discussed his influences.

“I got an opportunity to share with people who might not normally get a chance to see my work,” said McDonald, who hails from northern Saskatchewan.

The people who attended the workshop were able to express themselves through art as well, something McDonald said is always therapeutic and cathartic.

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Cam.lee@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @northeastNOW_SK