Angelique Merasty

Angelique Merasty (1924–17 January 1996) was a Canadian First Nations birchbark biting artist of the Woodland Cree First Nation.

Background Merasty was born in Amisk Lake, Saskatchewan, where she spent most of her life practicing and selling her artwork.

Merasty was best known for her birchbark bitings, the Indigenous art practice of dentally perforating designs into folded sheets of thin bark. Birchbark biting is one of the oldest Indigenous art forms, historically practiced by women of the Subarctic and Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. While most birchbark biters created designs with lines, Merasty used a pointillist approach and created complex symmetrical images of flowers, insects, animals, and landscape sceneries. She died at the age of 66, and was one of the last recorded artists to maintain the Indigenous, traditional art of birchbark biting. Merasty's work was showcased in several Canadian museums including the Museum of Man and Nature and the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

Personal life Merasty grew up on an island in Amisk Lake in northern Saskatchewan, where she lived with her mother, Susan Ballantyne. She married Bill Merasty in 1947, who also assisted Angelique Merasty with her artistic practices. Together, they had one son named Joseph Merasty, who died six months after his birth due to an illness. She was however, able to get false teeth funded by the government, including two sharpened upper canines that were specifically designed to help Merasty continue her art. On 7 January 1996, Merasty died of a heart attack in Saskatoon.

In Merasty’s early artistic practices, her designs were mostly geometric, but she later emerged with a unique style. She departed from established practices, by utilizing a pointillist approach for her bitings, rather than linear incisions. Merasty achieved complex, curvilinear designs, with a preference for flower and animal imagery. Later in her career, she was able to complete works from beginning to end without looking at her progress. She is known for reviving the art or birch-bark biting, and there is now an estimate of 12 known people who continue this tradition in North America.