Dwayne Wabegijig

Indigenous Artist Finds Inspiration Everywhere

Awalk around the city, watching some TV, flipping through a comic book: Thunder Bay artist Dwayne Wabegijig finds inspiration everywhere. “It’s whatever catches your eye,” he says. “Maybe it’s a good story, maybe it’s a certain artist, his technique or his colours. It’s anything and everything.”

“I grew up liking comics,” he adds. “Conan the Barbarian stuff, you know, Frank Frazetta, all that. Also, when I started studying artwork on my own time, I grabbed art biographies. I gravitated towards Dali, van Gogh, Picasso. I liked them for their colours, and obviously Picasso for his experimentation.” Other inspiration for Wabegijig comes from Indigenous artists from Manitoulin Island (his mother is from the area), including James Simon Mishibinijima and Leland Bell.

As far as his artwork itself, experimentation is a big part of what Wabegijig does. “Art is often just about finding your own way,” he says. “I see a lot of my contemporaries, and people in the past—you associate a style with that person, and they don’t really move forward. I’m trying to find a new way to move forward with my artwork, blending different styles. I’ve managed to blend it a little bit here and there, but I don’t think I’m where I should be.”

Wabegijig says it’s a matter of finding the right feel. “Sometimes I like to do the backgrounds abstract, with just a blending of colours. Other times it’s just the techniques that you’ll use that are more texturized, as opposed to just the flat-coloured backgrounds of a lot of Native artwork,” he says. “I kind of like to blend them more.”

Currently, Wabegijig is a full-time artist, working 12-hour days a few days a week “just painting non-stop. Then I’ll rest for a couple of days,” he says. “A lot of time I’ll watch, maybe some documentaries, look at artwork, do some sketching.”

“I try different techniques and mediums just to experiment, play with them, find anything that I can use, or that I like.”

For more information, find Wabegijig on Facebook and Instagram @dwayne.wabegijig.

“Art is often just about finding your own way.”