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Description

Print has a black border and is divided into three spaces by two blue vertical bands. Outer spaces are empty. Centre space has two separate designs. Upper space has an oval design in red with two black spheres within and a black design below and beside. Lower space has heavy black curved design meeting at the upper edge and containing two red design elements. Pencil Inscription along the bottom edge reads 'MP Canoe Cranmer / 96'. The print is on light brown paper. (Now framed.)

Specific Techniques

Printed by Pacific Editions Ltd. Victoria, B.C. on Stonehenge Fawn paper in an edition of 90.

Iconographic Meaning

The bow and stern silhouettes, in the lower field, ride on the blue ocean, the tree from which the canoe was made and several plan and oblique views of the canoe can be seen in the upper field. When the image is turned clockwise so that the blue band on the right-hand side is horizontal, the major black form on the left, excluding the border, becomes a silhouette of the bow section of the canoe floating on a blue sea. When reversed one hundred and eighty degrees, the canoe's stern section is revealed in profile. When the painting is returned to the first position the central black, roughly triangular area on the right hand side becomes one vertical half of the canoe as seen directly from a frontal elevation. The negative, unpainted, triangular space in the exact centre, represents a frontal elevation of the projecting bow piece. The roughly similar design, directly opposite, represents the same view, only as seen from the stern. When the painting is returned to its upright position, the uppermost central black element on the right becomes a plan view of the gunwale extending back from the bow. The first red element immediately to the left of this represents the inside bottom of the canoe while the negative space between this and the gunwale becomes the sloping side. The similar, but slightly asymmetrical design elements directly to the left feature a similar view of the stern. Finally, the central cylindrical motif in red represents the log from which the canoe was hewn, the paired vertical lines extending above the crescents depict cracks in the log. The circular part of this is the log in cross sections and the design in black and red contained within the circle suggests an end view of the canoe which will eventually emerge from the log. See Macnair's description in "The Legacy" pp. 100-102,122, 165, 173

Narrative

In the 1970's the artist created a series of non-figurative/abstract paintings on mahogany plywood. Four of the images - Killer Whale, River Monster, Canoe, and Ravens in Nest, were produced as serigraphs. Canoe is derived from a 1978 painting, shown in "Kesu': The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer" on page 97.