As an artist, I paint and draw what gives meaning to me as an individual. And what gives meaning are those things Ojibwe-Anishinaabe. I look at my art from a tribal (i.e., Ojibwe-Anishinaabe) perspective. Through my art, I visualize a particular facet of Ojibwe-Anishinaabe experience. 

My drawings and paintings are personal visions of a tribal reality. These stylized, figurative images compose a micro/macro-scopic Ojibwe Universe. Interwoven in this Universe are creation stories, origins of traditions, legends, and the roles of women and men in Ojibwe society. Together, they form my central theme, Manidoo-wiwin Ojibway – the tribal spirit of the Southwestern Ojibwe.

I approach my art from the traditional concept of Masinitchibiigewin – the act of, or the art, of painting and drawing. This Ojibwe term was used in relation to birch bark drawings (masinitchigan), and the sacred rock paintings (masinibii-asin). These tribal pictographs included delineations of Anishinaabe man, the animal-beings, and the bird nations; Mide symbols represented the sky, earth, and her plant-beings, as well as sounds and spirit power. A simpler symbolism was used in dream symbols, clan marks, messages, and casual records.

In relation to this, my art focuses on a central image (masinitchigan) which projects a quality, or character, of traditional or contemporary tribal spirit. In function, my images represent pictographs. And, as in pictographs, in my images the teachings, beliefs, and (past and present) history of the Southwestern Ojibwe is presented.