Jason Clark Prints

To check availability and to purchase any of the prints created through MATRIX Press please contact Director James Bailey by emailing: James.bailey@umontana.edu

Jason Clark
"Winona and the Big Oil "Windigo"
Woodcut & Monotype
26"x 35"
2014
Printed on Lennox 100
$300.00

Windigo
This print deals with the legend of the Windigo. In some of my Windigo prints the Windigo is depicted in the traditional concept of the Windigo while in others like the print above I depict it in a more contemporary context. 

The Windigo is a creature of the Algonquian peoples culture, imagination, and experience. It is the personification of both the physical and spiritual starvation. It may take on any number of forms: a supernatural cannibalistic giant, a phantom of hunger which stalks the forests of the north in search of loan humans to consume, a personality disorder or disturbance in an individual who is crazed and performs acts of cannibalism, or a spirit with a heart of ice that flies through the night in search of victims to satisfy its hunger for human flesh. It epitomizes all those unhappy souls who die of starvation in the winter. Because Windigo is afflicted with never-ending hunger it can never get enough to eat and is always on the verge of starvation. 

In appearance the Windigo is described as being so thin that its dried skin is pulled tightly over its skeletal frame. It has an enormous head, a huge twisted mouth and great jagged teeth that are not covered by lips, and beady eyes. It has unlimited supernatural strength and speed and moves faster than the human eye can follow. It can change shape at will, making it blend in with the trees and winds. It churns up the surface of the earth as it wanders about snapping off treetops or brushing the trees aside carelessly, as a man brushes aside grass. The Windigo gorges itself as if it will never eat again and lusts for more. It represents not only the worst that one human could do to another, but also greed, selfishness, gluttony, and excess.

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