G. Peter Jemison: One fine painting

Contributed by Chunbum Park / In the seventeenth century, the English justified their North American conquests with the Roman concept of res nullius, whereby all people owned unoccupied land until it was put to some worldly use. The English philosopher John Locke suggested that the Europeans could disregard all indigenous forms of government and deny indigenous peoples sovereignty because Europeans, unlike the indigenous, valued and worked the land. G. Peter Jemison, a member of the Heron Clan of the Seneca Nation, makes paintings and drawings that encapsulate indigenous beliefs about the land, many now on display in his show “On the Right Path” at 47 Canal, quietly but firmly countering the colonialist narrative. 

While modern notions in the West and East alike tend to rate land only as good as the money that it can generate, indigenous people consider their land sacred because, among other things, it hosts the spirits of their ancestors and is integral to cherished creation stories. In their view, the products of the land also deserve respect as ancestral and spiritual blessings. Jemison’s Onondowagah Territory, an acrylic landscape painting on paper, embodies visual poetry honoring this historical point of view. The topical theme of the painting is the change of seasons, imparted by the abundant yellow and orange and dearth of green as well as the cool energy of the blue sky. The painting purposefully frustrates analytic scrutiny, presenting no clear horizon line behind the mountains and offering no coherent visual accounting of light and shadow. Despite the composition’s departures from convention, it appears beautifully integrated. What emerges, therefore, is a sense of the mystical. 

Jemison’s eschewal of traditional visual constructs also challenges Western attempts to tame nature and subjugate those who exalt it. Despite its apparent beleaguerment, the slender green strip suggests a defiant life force, refusing to retreat from the coldness of the coming winter without a fight. For the European colonizers, land was profitable and, in those terms, quantifiable. For Native Americans, the land was and remains beyond measurement or calculation, of unique and indestructible spiritual value. While many works in Jemison’s exhibition are culturally powerful and aesthetically compelling, the beguiling technical idiosyncrasy of Onondowagah Territory seems to set it apart by at once acknowledging Native Americans’ tragic history and translating their transcendent sensibility about the land directly onto the canvas.

“G. Peter Jemison: On the Right Path – Works, 1982–2023,” 47 Canal, 291 Grand Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY. Through January 27, 2024.

About the author: Chunbum Park completed their master’s thesis at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where they explored the topics of the anti-racist aesthetics and gender fluidity. Park has recently exhibited at the SVA Chelsea Gallery and in an online exhibit organized by SHIM. Park is the founder of the Emerging Whales Collective, an online community for artists.