In Jonathan Thunder’s painting, the Pink Panther meets Ojibwe cultural mythologies and Surrealism

In the storage room behind the University of Minnesota’s Nash Gallery, artist Jonathan Thunder, 48, carefully slides a 12-foot-long roll of canvas out of a cardboard tube, slowly unfurling it.

On the canvas, he painted a man wearing a cowboy hat and a scarf with Ojibwe-style patterning on it. The guy is fast asleep on a shore, bathed in a pink hue. He clutches an old cellphone. A notebook with blank pages has fallen open in front of him. A blue cat that looks like the Pink Panther’s cerulean-toned cousin quietly climbs onto his legs.

“Artists are dreamers,” Thunder said. “We have to dip into that part of us where dreams come from and to me, it’s sort of like being taken out to sea. Lake Superior has always given me the sense that, if it wanted to, when I am standing on the shore, it could easily just take me away.”

Curator Howard Oransky at the U commissioned this huge painting from the artist for his solo exhibition “Jonathan Thunder: The Artist as Storyteller” at the University of Minnesota’s Quarter Gallery. Presented by the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Art, the exhibition includes 15 paintings spanning 2016-2024, plus this new commission.

Oransky first encountered Thunder’s work 10 years ago. This is their fourth time working together.

“Jonathan is a person who is bursting at the seams with talent,” Oransky said. “He’s got tremendous artistic talent, but he’s also got intellectual talent and spiritual talent, and he has a great sense of humor about his work and himself.”

Thunder, known for making surreal paintings that mix pop culture and Ojibwe cultural references, is a recipient of the Jim Denomie Memorial Scholarship and was a 2022 McKnight Foundation Fellow.

Thunder grew up on comic books, cartoons, the early days of reality TV and urban life in the Twin Cities in the ’80s and ’90s, and his work is awash in pop culture references. He also studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., and has a bachelor’s degree in visual effects and motion graphics from the U. He’s been based in Duluth since 2014, and is married to the writer Tashia Hart. They have a son, Minnow, 3.

Thunder was born on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. He has connected with Ojibwe culture through commission work, like a series of books he illustrated for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe that paired Ojibwe first-language speakers with people who learned it in college.

“I was hired to interpret the stories into images through notes that I had been giving, because I don’t speak it fluently myself,” he said. “That was a very important project not only for my own personal life but to the language and culture as a whole because it is something that people are working pretty hard to keep alive.”

It’s one of the experiences that made him feel like a “productive member of my tribe,” he said.

Each of Thunder’s paintings encompasses its own story, but it’s also up to the viewer to interpret it however they’d like.

The paintings in this show feature characters like Minnie Mouse, Tweety Bird, a male nude (inspired by the Guerrilla Girls), Donald Trump, cupid and jackalopes. There’s also one of two characters having a coffee. Pop surrealism inspires him.

He admires artist Ron English, who uses brand imagery, street art and advertising styles in his work. Thunder described English’s style as “so fluid … he never hunkered down in one school. It was about the message of the story, or whatever’s on his mind.”

That leads us back to the great lynx, or “mishi bizhiw,” that Thunder represents in his latest painting using a Pink Panther-like character.

“It’s a complex character, and ultimately, in my mind, it’s like a dragon story,” he said. “It protects the lake, which is something that’s important to me … I painted the [great lynx or “mishi bizhiw”] as not just a protector or a good guy, but as a kind of force of nature, sometimes a misunderstood character, something that we can all identify with.”

When: Ends May 17. Public reception on May 8, 6-9 p.m. Artist lecture noon Tuesday at InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art E110.

Where: Quarter Gallery, Regis Center for Art, 405 21st Av. S., Mpls.

Hours: Tue.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

Cost: Free

Info: cla.umn.edu/art or 612-625-8096