Cree artist changes focus

Cree artist Betty Albert has changed the focus of her work after working on “women’s art” over the past 20 years.
“I’ve gotten away from my focus on women and the moon,” Albert said. “I’m into wildlife now.”
Since moving to a new home with a studio about a year and a half ago that overlooks a lake outside Cochrane, Albert has been painting images of Canada geese and wolves.
“I’ve done a lot of geese – it’s just something the people of northern Quebec just love,” Albert said.
Although Albert was adopted and raised by a French-Canadian family in northern Ontario, she eventually discovered her father and birthright as a Cree. Since then she has become well known for her clan mother paintings, which she first began producing in 1994.
“I think I’ve done three or four series of clan mothers over the years and I’m about to start another one,” Albert said.
Albert published a book in 1998 featuring the clan mothers, the Moon Journal and Dream Log.
“It was a real success,” Albert said. “We sold over 9,000 copies of that Moon Journal.”
Albert also produced a series of books in partnership with Emily Faries aimed at native organizations, schools and education authorities, with sales of more than 10,000 copies.
Albert began selling lithograph prints of her artwork in 1992, marketing them across Canada and the United States.
“We did extremely well,” Albert said. “I’ve been making a living from this and raising my family since 1992.”
Albert praised her father for encouraging her to follow her dreams as an artist, noting that he gave her the name Wabimeguil, which means White Feather in Cree.
“He was the one who said, ‘you don’t have to do anything but be an artist,’” Albert said. “He helped me to market and publish everything that we’ve done over the last 20 years.”
Albert began printing her own artwork in 2005 for sale in her own art gallery, the Wabimeguil Art Studio, which she opened in Cochrane with former Cochrane mayor Lawrence Martin.
“That was a lot of fun,” she said, noting that she experimented with a variety of printing mediums, including different types of paper and canvas. “That was a real learning curve for me. I really enjoyed it.”
But after a few years, Albert realized she was getting burnt out, so she decided to close the art gallery and focus on creating original pieces of art.
“There were certain things that I needed to concentrate on being an artist,” Albert said. “I needed water, I needed bush and I needed silence. I needed a place where I could just focus on painting, so we found a beautiful cottage on a lake that’s 20 minutes north of Cochrane.”