Truth Image Goes Viral: Kingston Artist Portia Po Chapman’s Indigenous Illustration for Queen’s University

Truth Image Goes Viral:
Kingston Artist Portia Po Chapman’s Indigenous Illustration for Queen’s University

The “Truth” image went viral during the week leading up to Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Sept. 2021. Across Canada, the image was featured with an orange background. In this post, Po expands upon the image and how it’s popularity took off during that week, click here. The truth image was one of 10 Indigenous Themed icons that Po was commissioned to illustrate Indigenous “Ways of Knowing” for the Queen’s University Office of Indigenous Initiatives website in 2020.

Since then, the icons from the collection decorate and honour a multitude of Queen’s University documents and events. When Po created the icons, the brief was to create something similar to the University of Saskatchewan images. The brief that she was given went a step further, “but one-of-a-kind.” The commissioning committee wanted Po to create illustrations that distinguished Queen’s University from all other Universities. So, in short, the brief was like having one’s cake and being able to eat it too. To paraphrase the brief, one could say: “illustrate icons like U of S, but make them nothing like U of S.”

When Po offered her idea of creating circular icons, like buttons, that could be easily used across the University platforms, it was a NEW concept. Contemporary graphic circular Indigenous Illustrations were, in general, not being used by other Universities, so there was really no comparison at the time. It can be argued that if one sees circular, graphic icons like the ones the Queen’s University has, it was because Po and the OII created them first.

The icons also featured Po’s circular composition and artistic style that is inspired by wild grapevine silhouettes cast by the bright noonday sun.

It was quite the day, September 30, 2021, for Po who was inundated with a multitude of requests to use the “Truth” image because the public, somehow, began to view it as the new Orange Shirt Day for the “Every Child Matters” campaign. With each call, Po referred the people to the Queen’s OII because they commissioned the image.

Now that 3 National Days for Truth and Reconciliation have passed (Queen’s Gazette ), it seems that the public have adopted the image as another representation of Truth and Reconciliation during Orange Shirt Day. Here are some links to examples of where the image has been shared and/or published:
Women’s Shelter
Girl Guides of Canada
York School Board
Pickering College
Municipality of Dundurn
Newmarket Mayor’s Office
Fringe Toronto
Queens Arc
Queens Law

Po’s contemporary art style and circular imagery has been growing more popular since Queen’s University published the images on the OII website. This past September 2023 the Broadview Press Indigenous Philosophies of Turtle Island Anthology: Ways of Being in the World featured her artwork. The editor from Oklahoma , Andrea Sullivan-Clarke and University of Windsor professor contacted Po because of the Queen’s Page. Also a Salish construction and land development company (the branding has not yet been made public, so the images have net yet been publicly released for public viewing) commissioned Po to do their new logo and branding imagery based upon the “Elder in Residence” image from the Queen’s Faculty of Education Indigenous Initiatives.

Visual Artist Portia Po Chapman Artworks and Biography: Additional Information

Visual Artist Portia Po Chapman Artworks and Biography: Additional Information

This post is under construction and will be edited/added onto . For listed information, view Po’s CV . For Po’s About info/page.

At A Glance Bio

Portia Keely Chapman (“Po”), is a Canadian (born 1997, Belleville, Ontario) emerging, contemporary visual artist illustrator and drum maker reclaiming her Indigenous Ancestry.  She created the Queen’s University Indigenous Illustration “Truth” which the University features each year on the annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.  The “Truth” image is one of eleven groundbreaking Indigenous illustrations that were first commissioned in 2020 as digital web icons by the Queen’s University Office of Indigenous Studies.  In 2022, a second set of icons was commissioned by the Faculty of Education for their Indigenous Initiatives.  Since 2020, Queen’s has incorporated the icons through the University documents, including the “Truth” image which has been featured on Orange Shirt Day by multiple organizations across Canada.

Chapman’s first published cover artwork was “My Creation” in 2017 by the ASUS Journal of Indigenous Studies that also, in the body of the journal, featured 3 additional artworks created by Chapman.  Her most recent cover artwork and chapter illustrations were commissioned by Broadview Press for the textbook: Ways of Being in the World, edited by Dr. Andrea Sullivan-Clarke.  The contemporary, custom designed, Indigenous themed images depict the subject matter and key words from the book.  They played a seamlessly integral role in the storytelling of the textbook as a whole.

Chapman is also known for her murals: “My Creation” in the Kingston Hall Reflection Room, and the Base31 public art “Warbler Watching” in the Aviator’s Garden, “Building a Bright Future” in the Lecture Hall, and “Exploring the Senses” in the Sensory Garden.  The two Base31 circular murals utilize a circular composition with a delicate fish-eye lens distortion.  Chapman developed the flow of the circular imagery, while creating the Queen’s icons.  The images draw the viewer’s eyes around the composition while simultaneously creating depth with the use of colour.  Because the murals use colour blocking rather than blending, Chapman creates shadow and highlights by clever placements of progressive tones rather than shades.  Although the viewer may at first interpret the colour becoming darker, as if simply adding different amounts of black to the hues, Chapman mixes different hues.  This sort of building dimension through hue variance closely replicates the organic aspect of nature.  By pulling the colours apart, Chapman has innovated a fractured tinting method that is perceived by the viewer as wholeness.  The 2 circular murals, commissioned by Base31, magnificently illustrate the effect because “Exploring the Senses” is 66” in diameter and is mounted about 12” above the ground.  The viewer can interact with the painting because it can seem that the viewer is standing within the image.  “Building a Bright Future” is 72” in diameter and has been constructed to appear as a very large drum with a 6” deep cedar frame. 

Chapman’s drum exhibition premiered October 7, 2023 at the Parrott Art Gallery in Belleville, Ontario.  It features hand painted hand drums that Chapman constructed.  The images embody a circular compositional movement more similar to the Queen’s icons.  Chapman wanted the images to move with the drum in any way that the drum is held.  The translucent acrylic paint upon the translucent elk raw hide creates a flat illusion of depth because the exceptionally thin paint casts shadows through the rawhide resulting in an illusion of the image floating above the skin.  Chapman prefers to paint upon stretched elk rawhide rather than canvas.  Chapman’s drums, painted and ready to paint drums, will be featured in June 2024 at the Picton Gather in the County arts and crafts show, at which she will demonstrate her painting method so that other artisans can paint their own drums in their studios.  Chapman views drum making as a meditative, spiritual art whereby the artist nurtures the drum into existence.    

Background

Portia Keely Chapman, lived in Stockdale, Ontario up until she was 4 years old. She then moved to her newly built cottage in the woods along the south shore of Moira Lake, just west of Tweed, Ontario.  Chapman’s family spent many years (2002-2017) invested in restoring the Land, upon which the Great Indigenous Battle of Chuncal Lake occurred in 17__. It was during this time, Po developed a very close relationship with the lake, the forest and the drumming pulse of Creation. Her characteristic art style and painted hand drum exhibition, “Drumming Sounds of Colour,” are inspired by her life experiences communing with woods and forest creatures. The bending images of her circular compositions are inspired by times when looking up at the sky amongst tall trees seeing them bend toward a focal point 80+ feet above her.   

Having attended St. Michael School and Nicholson Catholic College from 2010-2015 in Belleville, Ontario, in 2019 she moved to Belleville and established an art creation studio in her high rise apartment overlooking the Bay of Quinte.  During the Covid19 pandemic, Chapman taught art based programming at the ALCDSB Remote Learning School, while after school hours she filled multiple art commissions, negotiated contracts, conducted art planning meetings by Zoom, and made hand drums.  In the fall of 2022, Chapman expanded to a 3 room art studio in Kingston, Ontario.  Upon moving to Kingston, Chapman began teaching, Secondary School Visual Art classes for the ALCDSB, and community art workshops for youth and families at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.  Between January 2022 and November 2023, Po completed 47 art pieces, 29 of which were commissioned works ranging from digital art and hand-painted murals to hand drums.  In September 2023, Chapman began teaching Adult Education in Kingston and Picton, Ontario and in November, she joined Kingston’s TETT Centre as a volunteer in order to help out fellow artists and artisans.

Art Awards

Chapman received her first art award in 2011.  At her grade 8 graduation, she was awarded the “Achievement Award in the Arts.”  In 2013, Chapman won the ALCDSB logo design contest.  The “Faith in Action,” logo was used by the school board for about 7 years.  It was displayed at the entrance of every school as well as on their website and printed documents.  At that time, Chapman had not yet taken a visual art course, privately or publicly.  The award recognition prompted her to commence art education in grade 11.  In the spring of 2015, Chapman was further recognized for her excellence as a young budding artist.  At her grade 12 graduation, Chapman received the “Top Marks Award for “Exploring and Creating the Arts,” “Sisters of Providence Award for the Arts,” and the Quinte Arts Council Bursary. Post graduation, Chapman received the Queen’s University Excellence Scholarship to study Visual Art in the BFAH Studio Art program.  At the BDIA Spring 2015 Student Art Contest, Chapman was awarded “Best in Show” for her 36”X48” Oil on Canvas, “Love Expressed.” Then at Chapman’s Queen’s BFAH Graduation she received the Queen’s Medal in Visual Art for having the highest overall GPA of all the BFAH graduates.

The following is a list of her local art awards:
2011 Achievement Award in the Arts
2013 Faith in Action Logo Contest Winner
2015 Top Marks Award for Exploring and Creating the Arts
2015 Sisters of Providence Award for the Arts
2015 Quinte Arts Council Bursary
2015 Queen’s University Excellence Award to study BFA Visual Arts
2015 BDIA Annual Student Art Competition Best in Show
2016 Tweed Agricultural Fair 1^st in Open Class Special
2016 Tweed Agricultural Fair 1^st in Wall Craft Home Decor
2019 Queen’s University Medal in Visual Art