Value: $650

Artist Bio:

Sean Michael Couchie is a self-taught artist who has had an interest in art since early childhood and later formalized his craft with a degree in Advertising Art from Fanshawe College in 1991. Sean is a member of the Nipissing Band of Ojibways. He considers winning the Peace Hills Trust Native Arts Contests in 1992, 1996 and again in 2002 as major contributors to his success as a First Nations artist. In 2007 the Bravo and APTN networks aired a documentary entitled “From the Spirit” featuring the life and works of Sean Couchie. Sean is an artist and illustrator who enjoys a diversity of different media, working in oils, acrylics, graphite, airbrush, pen and ink, scratchboard, and woodburning for his work. He makes his home in London, Ontario with his wife and two daughters.

Artist Statement:

Trickster is a raven who transforms the world, sometimes by accident. In this work, the Raven wears a First Nations elder’s headdress to reference a lesson from one of the many Trickster legends: Trickster inadvertently releases the world from darkness, giving us the sun, the moon and the stars, when he tricks an old man into opening a box in which he had hidden all the light of the world in order to avoid knowing whether his daughter was beautiful or ugly. Beauty is in everything if we choose to see it.