Annora Brown, “Windblown Tree at Lee’s Lake,” no date
watercolour and graphite on paper, 15” x 22.5” (Glenbow 57.46.9)
Few people these days have heard of Annora Brown, an early artist and naturalist who grew up in Fort Macleod, a small town south of Calgary.
Brown, born in 1899, studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto with teachers that included Arthur Lismer and J.E.H. MacDonald before returning to Alberta.
She loved to ramble on the grasslands and collected stories about the region’s botany. She also created many paintings and prints, research that eventually led to her 1954 book, Old Man’s Garden: The History and Lore of Southern Alberta Wildflowers. She described it as a “book of gossip” about plants and hoped it would encourage readers to think of the flowers as their friends.
This year, Rocky Mountain Books, a small Victoria-based publisher, breathed new life into her work by publishing a second edition that includes an introduction by Mary-Beth Laviolette, a freelance arts writer and curator based in Canmore, Alta.
Laviolette mentions a transcendent experience Brown experienced in childhood as she gazed at Gaillardia, commonly known as blanket flower. As Brown recalled later in life: “I suddenly felt a presence all around me, as if the spirits of the Earth had come out to share the moment with me.”
Annora Brown
The “Old Man” of the title reflects Brown’s friendships with Indigenous people of the area, home to Niitsitapi, the Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Kainai (Blood) and Pikani (Peigan) nations. The Old Man, or Napi, as he is now more commonly known, is considered a trickster figure, but in Brown’s mind naming him in the title was a way to honour “the super-natural spirit responsible for the prairie-foothill-mountain landscape of the Niitsitapi,” Laviolette writes.
Brown, who died in 1987, writes with fluid lyricism and includes interesting anecdotes from settler history, as well as Indigenous traditions, with, for the times, a refreshingly open-minded appreciation.
The book is illustrated with Brown’s black-and-white scratchboard prints – a form of direct engraving in which India inked is scratched away to reveal a white layer below – a veritable cornucopia of everything from prickly pear and sweet grass to milkweed, wild roses and wolf willow. Also featured are 12 colour plates of paintings – landscapes and flowers,as well as teepees, a feathered headdress and dancers in full regalia.
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Botanical illustration by Annora Brown.
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Illustration by Annora Brown.
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Illustration by Annora Brown.
I found myself thinking of Emily Carr, who predates Brown by 28 years, but similarly painted Indigenous subjects, including totem poles and West Coast villages. Carr’s work, a product of her times, have been revisited in recent years by Indigenous artists and scholars, who might also have something to say about Brown, particularly as this new edition emerges at a time of heightened awareness about settler culture’s appropriation of Indigenous voices and knowledge.
Annora Brown, “Prairie Chicken Dance, Blood Indian Reserve,” 1954
oil on canvas, 20” x 24” (Glenbow 57.46.4)
The book includes a foreword by Niitsitapi (Siksika) Bishop Sidney Black, the first Indigenous bishop of Treaty 7 territory in the Anglican diocese of Calgary, who praises the passion and creativity Brown brought to her work, as well as the “wonderful picture” she provides of the region before its transformation by modernity.
Mary-Beth Laviolette
Still, he is cautious. “I cannot comment on how Annora Brown’s book might be received or perceived by the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy,” he writes. “However, the illustrations and commentary I think would be very useful for those people who are studying or becoming aware of the variety of plants that were being used by Indigenous people prior to contact.”
Brown seems more of a naturalist than Carr, and is also more closely bound to conventional notions of artistic representation. While the paintings presented in this book, do not rival Carr’s expressive appreciation for nature, Brown's work reflects a strong design sensibility.
Still, Brown’s lovely Windblown Tree at Lee’s Lake, an undated watercolour reproduced across a two-page spread, hints at transcendent possibilities in its evocation of the visual and sensory pleasures of a brisk day in the Alberta foothills. ■
Old Man’s Garden: The History and Lore of Southern Alberta Wildflowers by Annora Brown: Rocky Mountain Books, Victoria, 2020.
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