Bone deep

Dee Barsy’s home is crawling with critters.

The 39-year-old artist and new mother’s whimsically modernist painting are all colour and life, but she has a soft spot for the arachnid and gothic in the objects she collects.

“One of the reasons I like bones and taxidermized things is because it’s kind of like bringing new life to something that’s passed away,” she says.

“I make contemporary fine art, so why would I want to collect it?”

There are preserved tarantulas, scorpions and a bat, furs and animal skulls.

Smashing Pumpkin and Joy Division posters in her living room attest to decades listening to alt rock, though these days it’s country — often Emmylou Harris, her eight-month-year old daughter’s namesake — that plays most on her speakers.

Upon closer inspection, the throughlines between what she paints and what she hangs seem clear. These days, her work is filled with animals, often inspired by her Indigenous roots.

“I guess one of my things that I’m curious about: what’s inside (the skulls), what’s behind the fur, what are the different layers? So much, like the way I paint in layers, taking things apart and putting them back together.”

Barsy’s work — which has hung in UN buildings, Premier Wab Kinew’s office, art galleries in Korea and across Canada — first started drawing eyes about 15 years ago.

In an era of high-theory multi-disciplinarity, Barsy struck a more traditionalist stance: she liked painting and she liked her old Russians, specifically the abstract Soviet modernists of a century ago — Kandinsky and Malevich — and 19th-century Russian authors.

Over time, birds, butterflies and other critters started popping up in the Anishinaabe-Ojibwa artist’s work.

Her paintings took on characteristics of the Woodland style with their clean, two-dimensional blend of modernism and traditional Indigenous imagery.

For instance, her 2017 painting My Four Grandmothers — an allusion to the four grandmothers she has as a ’60s Scoop adoptee — drew inspiration from Woodland masters Daphne Odjig and Norval Morrisseau, although there’s little mistaking her work for others, with her signature Barsy blue background and other elegant quirks.

Last fall, Toronto’s downtown Union Station was awash with her aqua blue as dozens of her paintings greeted the station’s 30,000 daily visitors.

The exhibition, Westerly Winds, explored the connections between trains, birds and people in transit. It was also a serendipitous nod to the Toronto Blue Jays, in the midst of their electric World Series run when the exhibition was up.

Currently, Barsy’s prepping a few murals she is painting in March along Graham Avenue, supported by Downtown Biz, in connection with Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn’s transformation of the Bay building.

Mock-up sketches of the project are pasted on her wall below photos of Barsy and her partner Ryan with their daughter Emmylou.

“What I’m trying to do with my new artwork is honour the past of its main company, but also bring new life in a less colonial way. So, for that project, I’m focusing on the canoe,” she says.

‘The canoe is traditionally made of birch and I’m trying to think about the birch tree and the environment it creates for birds and flowers. Essentially, it’s kind of a collaborative effort between all the different animals, flora and fauna that coexist with the birch tree. And I’m thinking about the canoe as a symbol for trade and business.”

Barsy scoots over to point out details in the sketches; the artist — who, when she had more time, was an avid runner and weightlifter — is using an orthopedic knee walker.

“I’ve always done things like BMXing, skateboarding. We all come to a point in our growth and our maturing where we push our body too far,” she says with a laugh, going on to explain that she has a friend who does mixed martial arts.

“I said, ‘Show me a leg lock.’ And I tried to get out. I don’t think you’re supposed to try to get out.”

In the sudden struggle, she felt something snap. Her first encounter with a new sport had ended with a broken leg.

“That’s the moment I realized I’m 39.”

One piece of art with a local connection on Barsy’s wall is a ballpoint-pen sketch of her daughter’s face by Richard Daniels, with lettering of Emmylou’s name by Bram Adey, a Winnipeg tattoo artist.

“I don’t really have any interest in buying paintings because I’m a painter. I want things that I can’t do. I’ve never been able to draw a human face,” she says.

But more importantly, the drawing is of Emmylou, the creation that the once footloose freelancer is thinking the most about these days.

“I always want to be with Emmy,” she says.

“We have the studio set up so that Emmy can be comfy there, putting her in her chair when I paint. We can all be there together. It’s really nice.”

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