Roy Henry Vickers described looking through fifty years of his own paintings and said it felt like meeting a stranger who happened to be him. I’ve interviewed a lot of people about their life’s work. I don’t know that I’ve heard it put quite that way before.
Roy turned 80 in June, and the timing lines up with the release of The Best of Roy Henry Vickers: 80 Selected Works, a retrospective co-created with his longtime collaborator Lucky Budd that draws from more than 400 pieces spanning his career. Roy didn’t choose the final eighty himself – he left that to his wife, Andrea, and Lucky – and he told me that watching them narrow it down brought back memories he hadn’t had in decades.
He was born in the back room of a schoolhouse near the mouth of the Nass River, where his mother was teaching, because the tide was out and the boats couldn’t reach the hospital in Prince Rupert. Roy tells it like he’s still a little amazed by it himself.
Roy talked about his own artistic evolution – starting out wrestling with traditional Tsimshian, Haida and Heiltsuk forms before realizing he didn’t have to paint as though he were living before colonization. He could paint as who he actually is, today. That shift eventually produced the sunset paintings that became some of his most recognized work.
We talked about his old high school art teacher, Bill West, who told him decades ago that understanding his own uniqueness was the key to creating something no one else could. Roy still gets emotional recalling it. Between the Order of Canada, the Order of BC, a Grammy nomination and this year’s honorary doctorate, it’s clear that advice stuck.
Hear the full conversation with Roy Henry Vickers on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP44PulsePodcast
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca.
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/