Among many of the traditional American cultures a method of picture writing was developed to communicate both with other tribes and within the tribal group.  Records of Ojibwa picture writing recorded in a Smithsonian ethnographic survey conducted in the late 1880’s drew me into an exploration of ideas conveyed through the use of image and language, especially in the form of chant and repeated ideogram.  If you have ever read a favorite book to a small child, too young to be able to read, you may have experienced moments when the child can repeat every word on a page, just by looking at the picture.  In this same way, the Ojibwa stories were recorded by the linking of their images and used as a mnemonic, or memory aid.  The title of this series comes from one such ideogram, translated “As I Float Down This Swift Stream”. I took it to refer to the life passage of the speaker, perhaps a context set by an elder prefacing a bit of wisdom about to be conveyed.

    These works are acrylic paintings on sized, but unstretched canvas.  Each painting is on three sections of canvas and all are approximately six feet high by nine feet wide.