“I have been painting memories, my practice has always centered around water and how it holds and contains us and is silent witness again and again to all events, constantly renewed and present in us, as it was for our ancestors.  But now I am looking back and I feel like I am reclaiming histories for myself. I am inspired by images from other histories of place . . . sections of Tom Thomson’s West Wind, and Jack Pine, appear with Peter Doig’s Camp Forestia, alongside a ghost moose, myself swimming in the lake, my boat in Swallow Lake at first snow. My father’s recurring image of a rocket launch, birds, and birds and birds!  An old Cadillac, fireworks, lakes, birds, bears, and the stars. It is just immensely pleasurable to rectify this even if it is just in my paint-world. I love these painters as well and hold them to no ill will! Peter Doig, Tom Thomson, Kim Dorland, these men are painting their lives, and I am grateful to live in a time and place where I can do the same.” – Anong Migwans Beam

In addition to her artistic work, Anong Migwans Beam is an outspoken advocate for the preservation of Indigenous archaeology and ceramics within local communities.  From 2016-2017 Beam served as the Art Director and Executive Director of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation. Later that year, she launched her successful line of watercolour and oil paints known as BEAM Paints.  In 2022 Anong was invited to speak at the Art Gallery of Ontario in partnership with AIC 2022: Sensing Colour, a midterm meeting of the International Colour Organization (AIC), organized by the Colour Research Society of Canada.  In June 2023, the artist was honored to be invited as a guest instructor in painting at Harvard Art Museums.