Tim Schouten
The Artist
I think of my paintings as history paintings. My landscapes push against notions of traditional western landscape painting and my abstracts reach for the same historicity through their own means. My chosen medium, the hot wax medium of encaustic, lends itself to expressing these ideas by its malleability and its mutability. Each painting, in the process of its making, develops a history of its own.
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On August 13, 1909, an Adhesion to Treaty 5 was made at the “Old Post” on Linklater Island in Island Lake, long a summer gathering place for the clans.
On September 29 last year, I travelled by plane and boat to Linklater Island to attend a Treaty 5 Memorial Gathering and the inauguration of the new Island Lake Tribal Council (Anisininew Okimawin) Grand Chief, Michael Birch. Anisininew Okimawin represents four Island Lake Anisininew Nations, Garden Hill, St. Teresa Point, Wasagamak, and Red Sucker Lake.
The paintings in my most recent exhibition, "The Island Lake Paintings (Treaty 5)," come out of that trip and ongoing conversations and research on the northern Treaty 5 Adhesions made between 1908-1910.
I acknowledge the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council, and the kind assistance of Anisininew Okimawin and the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba.
