Canada Dreams

My Enemy My Friend

Chief Dan George said it best.

            O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, I come to you
            as one of your many children. I need your strength and your wisdom.
            Make me strong not to be superior to my brother, but to be able to
            fight my greatest enemy, myself (Bawden, 1992, p. 73).

I was drawn to a photograph of a North American Indian on a calendar and thought I could capture his benevolent smile. Try as I would, I could only get a deep, piercing look that went right to my soul. I called him My Enemy My Friend. He looked over my shoulder while I worked in the studio, constantly judging me. I feel this is the part of myself that drives me on relentlessly. Usually he is curious and sometimes he is only laying a guilt trip, but in this portrait he is a stern task master. He is never cruel and never unfair. He is always on my side no matter how much I resent him and his glare.
The pastel is 18"X23". Completed Fall of 1990. $800.00 Can. framed.

Entrance to John's works, The Bull Dream, Primitive Truth, The Messengers, Inner Realm, The Ancestors, and Current

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