Artist moves around

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Artist Jim Logan was born in New Westminster, B.C. in 1955, but has worked across Canada throughout a brilliant career creating and promoting Aboriginal art. Currently a visual arts officer for the Canada Council for the Arts, an arts funding body, the Metis man of Cree ancestry has resided in Ottawa since this latest appointment.

"The human family has been a divided family for a long time," he said. "My hope is that my works are successful paintings, each being little stones in the big bridge of understanding between two peoples."

Logan started his artistic career painting social statement pieces that were informed by his experiences as a lay minister in Kwanlun Dunn Village on the outskirts of Whitehorse, Yukon.

"I had moved to the Yukon in 1983 to take a job with the publications branch of the Council of Yukon Indians, now known as the Council of Yukon First Nations," he said. "The most important artwork from this period was the series I titled, A Requiem for Our Children, which described existence within the residential school system in Canada; and INDIGENA, which commented on Canadian apathy toward the hardship and poverty of the Native community in Canada."

Internationally known artists Daphne Odjig and Norval Morriseau were early role models, and Logan's mother was a painter.

"I didn't have the basic understanding of traditional knowledge at the beginning. I needed to try to show Canadians in the mainstream society what had happened with the Aboriginal people," he said. He is especially recognized for the message portrayed by a work entitled Prisoners of the Canadian Dream, where children are depicted separated from their families and assimilated into the regimented routines of Indian residential schools.

"As a people, we'd have come around to the European way of life a lot sooner if they had not interfered with us, but we resisted when it was forced upon us," Logan said.

Although he never attended a residential school, he was usually the only Aboriginal student in the schools he attended on the lower mainland, and he recognizes the tragic effects the residential experience inflicted on Aboriginal people. "Today both Native and non-Native people realize it was cultural genocide, but at that time the government honestly thought it was doing us a favor."

Logan is pleased to see the cultural resurgence evident in many Aboriginal communities today. "In my own lifetime, I've come to understand more fully the spirituality of our people and to blend it with my Christian upbringing," he said.

Logan has experimented with pastels and oils, but now prefers acrylic paints. "I'm mostly self-taught, although I graduated from the Kootenay School of Art as a graphic designer. But basically as an artist I've learned through trial and error."

The talented father of six is also a poet.

"I've been writing poetry since I was a teenager as a way to express myself and my thoughts. It's been a re-discovery of who I am as a First Nations person, and a personal journey that I share with people because my struggles may help someone else who is travelling a similar path," he said. "We're basically all the same, but we cope differently with trying to fit into today's society."

Logan'and his wife, who is Mi'kmaq, live with her people near Truro, N.S. "I moved my painting practice and have lived there since 1995, relocating tentatively to Ottawa to take on this position."

Logan's art has been seen in galleries and exhibitions all over, including Expo 86 in Vancouver. He was a curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.,and is a member of the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry, the American First Nations Artist Organization and the Society of Yukon Artists of Native Ancestry. He advised the British Ministry of Culture in setting up an Aboriginal art awards program. He's been featured in numerous video and film presentations and his writing has appeared in literary and arts publications.

Logan's exhibition feauring works with the theme Twenty-four Songs opens April 26 at Edmonton's Bearclaw Gallery.