Eriahtlis Cogh (Big Book) is an energetic canvas made in Alex Janvier’s signature abstract style, immediately identifiable by its fractal-like hard-edge designs that dance outwards from the centre. Here, a biomorphic quality is apparent as the meandering forms come to resemble flower petals, stamens, unfurling vines or insect antennae. The lush purples, pinks, greens and blues evoke a jungle-like atmosphere, with the raw linen ground emphasizing the earthen foundation of the painting’s overgrowth.

Intricately patterned circles and dots are a frequent motif in Janvier’s paintings and murals, which, curator Lee-Ann Martin notes, “refer to life cycles and the connection between all living things and serve to balance the dynamic linear movement within his works.” This painting beams with a lush optimism as Janvier’s abstract visual language expands to incorporate signs of new spring growth.

With Eriahtlis Cogh (Big Book), Janvier presents us, as he so often does, with a puzzle: How do we reconcile his often disparate, descriptive titles with his non-representational, abstract painting? With some research, we can deduce two interpretive clues. First, that Eriahtlis Cogh is written in a dialect of the Denesuliné language that Janvier learned growing up on his family’s farm on the Le Goff Reserve (now Cold Lake First Nations, Alberta). Second, “Big Book” is most often used to refer to the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step program book first published in 1939, which would later become one of the best-selling books of all time.

Without reducing the interpretation of Eriahtlis Cogh (Big Book) to the social implications of its title, we can be certain that the tension between narrative and abstraction and Janvier’s status as a political artist are at the centre of scholarship about his work. Beginning in the late 1980s, Janvier began to work in a more explicitly representational milieu, with works like Apple Factory (1989, collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton) integrating memories from his time in the residential school system, which precipitated painful cultural erasure for Indigenous Peoples across Canada. In a feature article related to the artist’s 2022 exhibition, The Healing Language of Alex Janvier, Métis Elder Terry Lusty writes, “Alex’s works are a reflection of his association with the schools [that] … tore apart the children’s values system, habits, and behaviours, making many of them into ‘apples’ and propelling many into the depths of low self-esteem, self-identity, despair, alcoholism and drug abuse.”

As Lee-Ann Martin cannily reminds us, “[Janvier] is a political artist only in that he elicits a rigorous formal dialectic between composition and concepts through his work.” In other words, the interpretation of Janvier’s paintings cannot be reduced only to the stories that pervade his career or to the physical construction of his works. Instead, the latter’s importance resides in the interplay of these elements that continually redefine one another. In this light, the simplified suggestions of budding spring greenery winding across this canvas, much like AA’s “Big Book,” become symbols of rejuvenation, healing and new beginnings. Eriahtlis Cogh (Big Book) serves as a poignant reminder that Janvier’s oeuvre is best understood as a synthesis of all that the artist inherited personally, politically and culturally as a Denesuliné, transforming his experiences into a wildly generative universal painting language.

For the biography on Dr. Luigi Rossi in PDF format, please click here.