Benjamin Chee Chee, artist, of Ojibwa descent, born Kenneth Thomas Benjamin at Temagami, Ontario 26 March 1944; died at Ottawa 14 March 1977.

His early life was troubled and he lost track of his mother, whom he spent many years searching for. He moved to Montreal in 1965 where he developed his love of drawing, moving back to Ottawa in 1973.

He gained fame as he developed his unique style of clear graceful lines with minimal colour of birds and animals giving sense to emotion and movement. After finally finding his mother and achieving success as an artist, he committed suicide in an Ottawa jail.

Benjamin Chee Chee was buried in Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa, Ontario.

Source:
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Chee_Chee

Benjamin Chee Chee was born in 1944 in Temagami, Ontario, Canada. "Benjamin Chee Chee Life and Legacy" was originally a Canadian nation-wide travelling exhibition that sought to memorialise and celebrate the life and work of a noted Ojibway Canadian artist and martyr. At the age of thirty-two, and at the height of a newfound success, Chee Chee died tragically by committing suicide, while incarcerated in a police cell in Ottawa in 1977. The death of this brilliant indigenous artist, who had seen a meteoric rise to fame, shook the nation and unleashed a wave of criticism and focus on the predicament of First Nations communities and the epidemic of indigenous suicide. Despite a difficult childhood, growing up virtually parentless while schooled in brutal institutions, Chee Chee drew on his rich ancestral legacy of Ojibway visual culture for hope and inspiration. Unlike many of his contemporary 'indigenous' artists, Chee Chee pursued an economical graphic style, a reduction of line and image more in keeping with mainstream international modern art. Emphasising design and abstractionism, the artist’s subject matter is characterised by minimalist, linear representations of birds and other animals presented with grace and movement. Chee Chee used a limited colour palette and intentionally incorporated the emptiness of the background as a design element, preferring the media of acrylic paint on canvas and gouache on paper. Canada Geese forms part of a celebrated Black Geese portfolio, of which museum curator Elizabeth McLuhan remarked that: “…It depicts geese in their social context as a symbol of the family Chee Chee sought but never found… the works captured vitality, dignity and whims of wildlife.” Latterly, there has been a re-evaluation of the life and work of Chee Chee. With an emerging status as a national hero, Chee Chee’s work is well represented in Canadian Museums such as The Royal Ontario Museum, The Glenbow Museum (Calgary) and other national, academic and private collections both locally and internationally. - C.K. Janet E. Clark, Robert Houle: Benjamin Chee Chee: The Black Geese Portfolio and Other Works . Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay 1991 Alvin L. Evans: Chee Chee: A Study of Aboriginal Suicide. McGill-Queen's Press, Montreal 2004