Renowned artist opens own gallery in Cold Lake

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He's painted for more than half a century, and his work is exhibited all over the world. In 1995, he completed a masterpiece entitled Morning Star, painted on the ceiling dome of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Que.

Now you can see his art right here in Alberta with a visit to the Janvier Gallery in Cold Lake where more than 400 pieces of Alex Janvier's work are on display.

The gallery is open four days a week from Wednesday to Saturday. Janvier calls the gallery a family venture and he said it is fun to have his family involved. "It was a vacant building. We made a deal and the next thing we cleaned it up. It used to be a bank before, so we can now say that we have some of our paintings in a bank. All my stuff here at the gallery is from the last seven years and some of it no one has seen yet," the renowned artist said.

"We are getting a good response from the community," said daughter Jill Janvier, "with a lot of people stopping by to look at the paintings. We are also looking at selling merchandise with my dad's artwork on them, such as cups and other things. I really enjoy working there. It is not only the immediate family that is involved in the story, but we have extended family helping us as well."

Alex Janvier was born at the Cold Lake First Nation in northern Alberta. As a young Dene boy, he attended Blue Quills Residential School for 10 years. He received a Fine Arts Diploma from the Alberta College of Art in Calgary in 1960. "I've been painting from the time I was 12 years old to this day, and I've always had a paint brush in my hand, at one time or another," he said.

Janvier said that although he's faced some of the worst challenges while trying to make it as an artist, he believes that he and a handful of other artists have made a difference in how Aboriginal artists are accepted in the world today. "Sometimes people are not used to seeing successful Aboriginal people or for them making an attempt to be successful. When the world is not ready for you it is hard, and the world was not ready for us artists when I first started out. I went through the barriers. Morriseau was one of them. Jackson Beardy, Daphne Odjig, Ed Kovin, Carl Ray and Bill Reed-some of them are gone, with some of us still living that made an attempt to break through the barriers and succeed.

"I've had to face all the things that were directed at us as Aboriginal people because we are often generally classed as something undesired, but today we, as in artists, are changing that. It was not easy, but we did it. Now getting your artwork out there is wide open for any Aboriginal person that wants to do something with it. I think that I've done my job getting the message out there. Now the rest of it has to come from the younger generation," he said.

On Oct. 25, the Janvier Gallery will be officially open to the public. The grand opening celebration will begin at 1 p.m., with an opening prayer, an honor song and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Speeches, refreshments and a light snack will be served.

"We are expecting about 200 people," said Jill Janvier.