Metis painter inspired by northern lights

Metis painter Eugene Lefrancois usually tries to incorporate the colours of the northern lights into his paintings.
“You look at night at the northern lights and it has greens, blues, reds, oranges,” Lefrancois said. “I try to incorporate that into each and every painting.”
Lefrancois said he never runs out of ideas, pointing out the colours of feathers on a partridge and the colours on a tree, depending on the light, as examples.
“There’s art everywhere you look,” Lefrancois said. “If you can’t see, you listen to the wind, you hear the water. If you can’t hear, you can smell the trees, you can smell the earth, you can smell the rocks.”
Lefrancois said he often puts the Sleeping Giant into his paintings because he is “such a perfect perspective lens.”
“It’s nice to have someone laying there that you can use at any time you want,” Lefrancois said. “He’s not copyrighted, yet.”
Lefrancois included all the colours of mankind into one of his larger paintings, Past Present, which tells “the story of where we were and where we are going to be.”
“Our whole world is in there,” Lefrancois said. “All the colours of man and our spirits and the animals and the water are in that painting.”
Lefrancois said he has fun while doing his art, noting he paints every day.
“It started out as a hobby, then it started out as work, now it’s just a way of life,” Wabegijig said. “I used to work in the bush camps and I would do this after work in the kitchen. And the guys would be taking all of my stuff.”
Lefrancois appreciates the opportunities he has had to paint throughout his life.
“It is very peaceful, in a word,” Lefrancois said. “I mean it is much more than that.”