09/25/2026
Susan Ross: A Retrospective, in conjunction with the Art Dealer's Association of Canada's annual Canadian Art Hop, opens today until October 16, 2026.
Susan Ross was one of the great, quiet forces of the Thunder Bay art community. She devoted herself to documenting a changing way of Inuit life built around the seasonal cycles of trapping, hunting, and fishing. She sketched on location, working directly from in-person sittings, and always made sure to record her subjects’ names and compensate them for their time. She joined community members in hunting, sledding, fishing, which is part of why her work carries such rare authenticity. She was every bit as serious about her etching as her painting, building her own plates on a small printing press she installed in her home studio and seeing every piece through from start to finish.
Everything changed for Susan in 1961, when she met a young Norval Morrisseau. He drew her northward, into the First Nations communities around Red Lake and the Inuit communities of what we now call Nunavut and Baffin Island. The two became close friends and enduring mutual admirers — it was Susan who introduced Morrisseau to dealer Jack Po***ck, setting his career on its world-stage trajectory, and she herself went on to exhibit extensively at Po***ck's gallery starting in 1964. Those early shows of paintings on canvas and paper drew comparisons to other artists working in a similar vein — Doris McCarthy, particular, with whom she frequently traveled on sketching expeditions. Critic Pearl McCarthy praised her portrait work as early as 1962, following her debut show at the Chapel Gallery in Toronto, and further shows followed at Po***ck Gallery, along with the Fleet Gallery and Cardigan Milne Gallery in Manitoba. Her full body of work was the subject of a retrospective curated by Janet Clark for the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in 1994.
In 2002, in recognition of a lifetime of contribution to Canadian art, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson flew to Susan's home — she was, by then, of advanced age — to present her with the Order of Canada in person.