STORY OF HIS ART

Sapp's canvases, more than any other Canadian artist, center on family and community. Even when a canvas does not contain a single person, its title or content alludes to the presence of individuals who make up an intimate part of its memory. Many have observed Sapp's extraordinary ability to paint the landscape and natural world around him. Max Wykes-Joyce (Art in London) saw Sapp as having "an acute visual perception . . . a feeling for the land and for the life of the land is a part of the artist's subconscious inheritance." It is this life of the land that so intricately connects it with the people who draw life from it. Sapp's works reflect the deep value his people hold in the land, but it reveals even more sensitively the value the Cree see in all living things and especially human life. To the Cree, nature, human life, family and community are all intimately connected. It is for this reason that upon viewing Sapp's work one seems to enter into a deeply personal world that leaves the viewer with a sense of privilege in what is being shared with them. As we discover just how Allen Sapp paints and learn more about what his paintings can reveal to us, our sense of privilege deepens and the mystery of his gift begins to unfold.

The Memories of a Child

Allen Sapp's approach to painting is totally unique. There may only be a handful of artists in the world today who paint as he does. Although it is difficult to describe in words, Allen seems to be gifted with a photographic memory. He not only paints the past but he almost seems to return in his mind to that very situation that he wishes to impart upon the canvas. It is for this reason we see into Allen's paintings from the perspective of a child. Each experience he paints contains almost every significant detail from that moment and almost every moment he paints was seen in his childhood. Possibly one of the most common and striking revelations of this recall is that many of his paintings of the inside of his grandparents cabin are painted from the perspective of lying on a bed. This is not only revealed by the low perspective from which the canvas is obviously painted, but amazingly enough by the appearance of a cast iron rung which cuts across the corner foreground of the canvas so naturally that, unless it is pointed out, remains unnoticed by the viewer. Once one is attuned to the nature of Allen's recall you begin to see the child's perspective everywhere. The tiny cabin he was raised in often appears large and spacious (as a child would perceive it). Suddenly the many canvases that seem to be painted from an overhead perspective, become understandable when we see the small boy climbing up a tree. Gates, hay wagons, and fences often cut right across the foreground of a painting regardless of what they might seem to obscure, leaving no sense that they might be out of place.

Images Waiting to be Revealed

A second and equally fascinating aspect of Allen Sapp's approach to painting is in the execution itself. Almost every artist whose style is realism (schooled or otherwise) is familiar with and uses a technique called "a thumbnail sketch". This technique of drawing a few small preliminary sketches allows the artist to anticipate and plan how he will execute the final draft of his painting. Even artists whose ability or technique is such that they may not require a thumbnail sketch will sketch and rearrange a draft version of the painting directly on the canvas in charcoal. Sketching is the way most artists visualize and formulate what they see in their minds. It is the way an idea takes on substance and can be altered, corrected and rearranged. Even when an artist has immediately before him a subject or the landscape, he inevitably is required to make an initial sketch to ensure good execution. Allen Sapp uses neither photograph nor live subjects; he does not make sketches, nor does he draw a single line on his canvas in preparation. " I have to think here, " Allen says, tapping his temple, " before I can paint it here," he explains, pointing to an imaginary canvas. Somehow after he has thought and returned to that time and place he knew, he picks up the brush and begins. Initially, only meaningless forms and shapes appeared on his canvas. Their purpose remains obscure to an observer. Even their placement seems random. Each shape and form is executed with certainty and decisiveness; there is no timidity in his application. To watch Sapp paint is to begin to understand Michelangelo when he described his own work as not sculpting forms and figures but discovering and releasing in each marble block the figure that lives within. Stroke after stroke seems to pull the canvas into its own vivid reality making each form and shape reveal something new and unexpected. From what seemed at first to be unnatural shapes and forms come images of men working, horses pulling, or people playing. Allen appears not to be painting a memory at all, but completing the details of an image already present on the canvas longing to take form.

Each image is real . . . together they make up the life of Allen Sapp

"Sapp, more than any other Indian artist, is able to infuse his canvases with a definitive sense of mood, feeling and emotion for his subjects," says American sociologist John Anson Warner. This 'sense of mood' Sapp so effectively transmits is connected to how he recalls the images he paints. Allen does not paint fragments of stolen images from out of the past, rather each painting is a living experience which remains dynamic and alive both within and beyond the canvas itself. This is most effectively revealed by Allen Sapp himself when he was asked to describe one of his works. He began to describe a painting of two men driving sleighs on a road, the sleighs having paused beside one another. Rather than describing the technique or even the content, Allen begins to recall word for word the conversation of the two men who are speaking with one another how one man is taking wood to sell to a white man and the other tells him to ask the white man if he needs any more because he had some to sell also. It is not uncommon for Allen, while describing a painting to refer to a cabin or someone who is outside the painting, indicating that the other cabin or person would be "right over here" while pointing at the wall beside the painting. Through this we are able to see that each painting becomes a vivid event returned to, and relived by Allen, opening to the viewer something much greater than a single image of the past. It is for this reason that "Allen Sapp more than any other Indian artist is able to infuse his canvas" with that "emotion and feeling" . With this in mind we are able to view Allen Sapp's paintings in a new light we begin to fully appreciate how his work truly is an intimate portrait of his own people. Every character is real. Every image drawn is from experiences that together make up the life of Allen Sapp. Sapp's work is powerful because he has so successfully brought to his canvas a real sense of the Cree people and their past. In telling of a simple, quiet people and their determination to survive, his work over the years has depicted almost every aspect of life Allen ever knew on the reserve. His simple titles themselves become an intimate part of each painting and again reveal just how personal this portrait of his people is: "Sometimes I Would Sleep in my Grandmother's Bed", "John Bears Horses" , or "My Friend's Place at the Red Pheasant Reserve a Long Time Ago". It may well be possible that the power and success of Sapp's canvases is far beyond how he depicts the Cree of the past. Allen Sapp's portraits of his people seem to pull images from the past and connect them intimately with the present, providing a bridge and opening our eyes not only to a people who "lived long ago" but to a people alive and well, living all around us.

As Florence Pratt observed, "A fact too often missed is that Sapp's work depicts what is still common to the Cree Indian today." What may even be less obvious is how much of what Sapp depicts has a common root in us all. His love of family, the value he places in community, the importance of helping one another, these are memories of a way of life and value system our parents and grandparents have shared. In a highly complex, individualistic and commercial society we have moved far from this "old way" of life; but somehow we inwardly long for its simplicity and beauty. It is through this longing that we are all to be touched by Sapp's work, finding in it a place and a people not so different than ourselves. From the very beginning, Doctor Allan Gonor seemed to grasp that, " There is a universal quality to Allen s work. It reaches beyond the singular experience of the Cree to encompass a description of many Canadians." In a sense the people Allen Sapp so sensitively portrays extend far beyond the Cree to all persons who can find in his work something of themselves.

Allen's Story	Story of His Art	Gift Shop
Current Exhibitions	Educational Activities	Group Tours
Story of the Gallery	City of North Battleford	Online Registration
Cree Roots Game	Hours / Contact / Location Information	E-Mail: sapp@accesscomm.ca

Back to the Main Page