ARTIST FEATURE | Roy Henry Vickers

ARTIST FEATURE

ROY HENRY VICKERS

FIRST NATIONS ARTIST, TEACHER, HEALER, VISIONARY LEADER

Roy Henry Vickers is one of the most recognized First Nation Artists in the world. Known for his limited edition prints, master carving, architectural design, inspirational keynote speaking, and as an accomplished publisher, Vickers is incredibly talented—in so many ways.

Vickers contributes so much to the Art Community as well as communities-at-large through contributions in person or in art. Born in Laxgalts'ap (Greenville), British Columbia in 1946gt, he has remained on the West Coast of British Columbia for most of his life, residing at various times in Hazelton, Kitkatla, Tofino and Victoria.

Vickers’ First Nation heritage includes Tsimshian, Haida and Heiltsuk from his father’s side, who was a commercial fisherman by trade. His mother was a schoolteacher, whose family immigrated to Canada from England. Vickers studied traditional First Nations art and design at the Gitanmaax School of Northwest Coast Indian Art in Hazelton. This opportunity really gave Vickers the background to build what is now one of the most recognizable art styles, not only in First Nations’ art but in the Art World.

In many of his pieces, Roy uses superimposed 'shadow images' that add another layer of depth, history and myth to his clear, clean images. His signature Eagle Moon and various suns appear in many of his pieces – almost like a trademark or artist’s signature marking.

Vickers’ art resonates with people from all corners of the world, and he has received many awards and honours for his art and community involvement. He has received honours from Maclean’s Magazine, the Order of BC, and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, and was involved heavily in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic bid.

A wonderful contribution from Vickers was a gift to Queen Elizabeth II at the Commonwealth Summit in 1987; 48 limited edition prints were also gifted, of A Meeting of Chiefs, to Commonwealth Heads of State. Other lucky recipients include Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton with artist’s proofs of The Homecoming as official gifts from the Province of British Columbia.

Vickers’ art is hosted in many galleries and collections; among them UBC’s Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver BC), McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, ON), National Museum of Japan (Osaka City), National Museum of Man (Ottawa, ON), to name a few, and is included in many private collections as well.

Highlighted in Vickers’ work is stunning Canadian scenery; known for his use of colour and lines, he continues to

develop new pieces for both old and new fans to enjoy. Vickers has a gallery in Tofino on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, which was built as a traditional long house and boasts all the amazing detail that one would expect from his artistic abilities. The Roy Henry Vickers Gallery welcomes more than 500,000 visitors a year from around the world and is highly regarded as one of the area's main attractions.

Vickers returned to Hazelton in 1994 with his family where he now lives and works by the majestic Skeena River. He posts on social media daily with his morning mantras and coffee by the river.

With more than 26 totem poles under his belt, Vickers’ favourite includes the 10-metre (30-foot) Salmon Totem for the 1994 Commonwealth Games' Aquatic Centre near Victoria. Vickers made artistic recommendations to the architects and designers for the entire venue.

Roy Henry Vickers has lead the life of a now very accomplished First Nation Artist; he does visit his Tofino Gallery on occasion and Compass Magazine hopes to catch up with him there for the opportunity to talk about colour, lines and composition in the near future!

Images L-R Mother Earth; A Meeting of Chiefs, 1987; Mt. Arrowsmith, 1995; Blue Cruise, 2018; Roy Vickers at The Roy Henry Vickers Gallery in Tofino. Photos © Roy Henry Vickers Gallery www.royhenryvickers.com

ARTIST FEATURE

Gitxaala Rowboat Sunset Roy Henry Vickers

BEING HUMAN

James L. Anderson

SOMETHING NEW

We need something new to believe in. Something that you and I together can reach for beyond a dark world that grows ever more hopeless. Ever more inhuman. Ever more lost. Something new that has never been imagined or thought of before.

Something that will change everything if we can picture it in our minds, for the first time in all creation. And although we do not yet understand, such an astounding transformation is there at the tip of our awakening minds, now... beneath the surface all around us today. If we all could really know each other more completely and totally beyond the superficial ways we now try to communicate with each other; if we could develop a higher “awareness” and then be able to experience together the real rush of living each of us feel every second for as long as we live...Everything would change. We would no longer need to exist in our logical world of linearity, singularity and our “DISCRETE” invariant and symbolic existence to understand all reality. We could accept difference and multidimensional, multidirectional reality that no longer threatens us. We would no longer desperately need to CONTROL everything to feel safe. Instead of only seeing, feeling and knowing life from one window and the separate disconnected vantage point of our own “solitary one” discrete lives we lead...We could begin to see universe from beyond ourselves . Nothing from then on would be the same. We would experience and live in another universe beyond inhumanity, hate, and war. And it is conceivable that all of the devastating, hopeless global and cosmic problems we now have that seem totally impossible to solve would find solutions and astounding synergetic and symbiotic answers beyond anything we could privately imagine now, once we all evolve together.

By learning to “Share” life itself we would have to create a world where all of us would have to CARE for each other like we now have to obsessively and instinctively now Care for our lonely, separate lives.

More than this. Because we would be able to essentially live other lives just as we live our own lives, the death of our own individual lives would not be the primal, stark and horror FEAR it is that now makes us live our lives in mortal terror that we simply cannot escape, or overcome. Each of us will know deep and eternally within us for the very first time on Earth that life carries on beyond us, and that life never dies in Universe. Beyond that Evolution...beyond learning to “share” Life, Humankind will never live in and be enslaved by fear ever again.

And finally we could begin to conceive and evolve a higher consciousness beyond our primitive Logical, Rational symbolic “critical” thought. In the logical, rational blanket of scientific, mathematical fact, law, order and precise qualified, quantified differentiation we throw over all cosmos and Universe we can begin

to clearly comprehend that there are distinct things that simply do not fit and cannot be accommodated beneath that blanket. Some things that if we carefully examine them are actually evidence and incontrovertible proof of a deeper design and destiny of Universe that is now beyond any law, order or factual, symbolic representation we have ever imagined.

They secretly, beyond doubt or any logical constraint, demonstrate that the elemental truth of Universe is that it is everywhere a CONTINUUM to an as yet unborn total and absolute UNION. In other words EVERYTHING in universe manifests and exists as a Symphony of Creation, in different forms, everywhere. Everywhere.

This is a process, a dimension and a compendium in which there is absolutely no reference, definition or elemental interpretation in the entirety of our present primitive logical, symbolic thought and order. The only rudimentary crude representation of such an astounding, magnificent mysterious presence in our world we today ignorantly describe as:

THE “TWO” BECOME ONE.

This is the only incomplete and primitive grasp we have of CREATION.

Yet, this miraculous, totally inexplicable syndrome commands the most vital, primordial critical transformations that celebrate, honour and sanctify the essence of Life and all Universe itself beyond any Logical explanation.

It heralds the genesis of sperm and egg and the “BIRTH” of Human Life in a never ending rhapsody of Creation we believe we can control and order. It Shines in what we call the Fusion of the Sun supporting all life on Earth.

And it sublimes in the “critical stages” in plants when the seed begins to germinate, or the tendril bursts into leaf.

And mysteriously it transpires in the astounding Metamorphosis in insects and animals on this planet year, after year, after year. And so it goes.

All of which are orchestrated to a different beat and a different rhythmic cycle totally flowing in harmony that is forever beyond our primitive Logic.

Beyond the flawed discrete centered symbolic Human artificial, alternate formulas and technological equations with which we somehow try explain or mimic this cascade of CREATION, Universe effortlessly manifests perfectly around us everywhere in a presently unimaginable, magnificently elegant cohesion that we now ignorantly have no hope of simulating or symbolizing…only lived together.

And we have been whistling in the dark if we think we understand.

It is time we reach outside of our flawed Human Logical and Symbolic order and begin to evolve beyond it to finally accept and believe that Universe is the womb of UNION; instead of our pathetic language of mathematics and discrete equations we seek to control and define it with.

And also the time has come to step beyond our separate, discrete and “solitary one” lives and finally believe that the only way for our species to survive oblivion and extinction is to evolve the ability to “SHARE” life.

And in that awakening new awareness you and I have to understand that no private, Logical, Rational, symbolic and “critical” cognitive thought will give us the answers we need to find a way for our Life Force to survive into a new future for us all. The hope and the evolved higher species we will need to become will not come from facts, laws, numbers, words, equations or technology. We can only hope to discover the answer hand in hand. And the ability to finally transform and “share” life cannot be taught to us from computers or robots. We can only learn to evolve and find a New Way to be Human on Earth from each other. You and me.

Together is the only way.

© James L. Anderson,Campbell River, BC, Canada, Earth. www.james-l-anderson.com