Artist at 80 has stayed true to his gift throughout his career

Visual artist and storyteller Roy Henry Vickers considers his artwork to be his children and, just like his six human children, they are all special.

So, as a celebration of his 80th birthday, when Vickers was asked to choose 80 pieces from a career that has spanned 52 years to include in his newest book, The Best of Roy Henry Vickers: 80 Selected Works, he had to refuse.

“How am I going to select special images out of 400 special images to me? Because each image is a story. So I just said, ‘Well, I can't pick them. Someone else is going to have to pick them’,” said Vickers, whose Northwest Coast Indigenous roots are Haida, Heiltsuk and Kitkatla. He is also of British heritage.

The Best of Roy Henry Vickers was curated by Vickers’ longtime friend Robert “Lucky” Budd. The works in the book range from 1974 to 2024 and cover a wide range of styles from traditional to contemporary.

“Roy is among the world’s great storytellers. In fact, all of the images in this book—and all of the works Roy has ever created—tell a story,” wrote Budd. “Each of his works contain layer upon layer of meaning and teachings for those who are open to hearing the stories.” 

Vickers explains that the ancient people in the village of Kitkatla where he comes from, learned through stories and those stories were memorialized by images created by artists.

“The (artists’) responsibility was to inspire or remind the storytellers of the main characters or the main parts of a story that they were telling. So as a storyteller, which I didn't know I was until I was quite old, being an artist is connected to my storytelling in a very intimate way because I'm not only the storyteller, I'm the artist who creates the images to remind me of the stories,” Vickers said. “It's a very special gift.” 

Vickers has published about 15 books of his artwork. In 1988 he had to get a bank loan to self-publish his first book Solistic: The Art of Roy Henry. He says it was “incredibly exciting” when 12 months later he was ordering a second printing of the book.

He published his second art book Copperman in 2003 through his company Eagle Dancer Enterprises.

For more than a decade now his work has been published by Harbour Publishing, including his third art book Storyteller (2014) and as illustrator and author of Harbour Publishing’s children’s First West Coast Book series and Northwest Coast Legends series.

Harbour Publishing has been “awesome,” said Vickers, as people who are “moved by inspiration will know someone else who's moved by inspiration.”

Vickers says he was encouraged to publish his artwork in books by his friend Hilary Stewart. As an author herself, Stewart impressed upon him the value of making his work available to those who couldn’t attend galleries, including the Roy Henry Vickers Gallery which he built and opened in Tofino, B.C. in 1986.

In The Best of Roy Henry Vickers, he shares his story of becoming an artist. In 1972, at the age of 26, he took a leave of absence from the Saanich Fire Department to study at the Gitanmaax School of Northwest Coast Indian Art at ’Ksan. He returned to the fire department. Before he went back to the art school for his second year in 1974, he took a trip to Mexico and that’s when he decided to step away from firefighting.

“I wondered why I was so afraid of becoming an artist and leaving a good job. I started to cry. I realized that I had just been in a country where there was no unemployment insurance, there was no welfare, yet the people were happy. I was no longer afraid,” he wrote. “I knew I was going to be an artist for the rest of my life.”

He released his first prints in 1974, Tsimshian Chief and Tsimshian Woman.

Vickers recounts a career as an artist in which he never struggled, and he says that’s because he “stayed true to the inspiration” that drove his work. 

“As soon as I start creating something that I think will sell more and make me more money because other people will like it, then I've sold out, then I've sold my gift. And I made up my mind as a young artist never to do that. And I believe that is what has carried me all these years,” he said.

The Best of Roy Henry Vickers: 80 Selected Works was released May 26 by Harbour Publishing. It can be purchased at https://harbourpublishing.com/products/9781998526635