Vicker's triumph over alcoholism yields joy -Artist creates to satisfy self, not to gain recognition

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Tsimshian Artist Roy Henry Vickers was catapulted to international fame when his painting, The Meeting of Chiefs, was presented to the Queen on a visit to Vancouver.

The gift, to mark the meeting of Commonwealth leaders in 1987, cemented his reputation as an acclaimed artist and sent the value of his art soaring.

But where Vickers should have felt pride, accomplishment and purpose for the honour, he says he instead felt hollow and worthless.

"The guy sitting in a tuxedo at the table with Queen Elizabeth, his head was down, but he wasn't smiling," says the 47-year-old artist with a remarkable candor that would continue through the interview.

"The guy was an alcoholic. His head was down in shame. There was a very lonely person sitting there and he had nothing."

His off-and-on struggle with drinking came to a head almost two years ago when he considered suicide "cold sober." At a time when a pre-dinner triple martini was a daily ritual, a book project fell through and he returned home to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island to discover his new wife, Rhonda, and his 18-month-old boy, William were gone.

"I saw a 45-year old, I saw the role model for thousands of kids...that was totally unsuccessful.

"The voices said, 'You're not worth it. You're a total screw up'."

Vickers decided then and there to seek help for his addictive personality at a private clinic in Arizona, where two siblings had found help.

"It was kill myself or go."

Since the six-week treatment 21 months ago, he has been an "alcoholic in recovery," an admission he volunteers just minutes into the interview.

And now Vickers can concentrate on his art, which both pre-and post-recovery is impressive in style and scope.

He has just finished a nine-panel frieze of sculptures of Elders and chief at the entrance to the new $22 million aquatic facility for the Commonwealth Games in Victoria next year, with three totem poles still to be carved. The facility had its official opening Nov. 25.

And it's Vicker's creations - the swimming salmon etched in mirrored glass, the wood carvings, even eventually the decorative garbage cans - that international visitors first see when arriving at Vancouver International Airport.

R.H.V. as he sometimes refers to himself in the third person, can now talk about his work with pride.

And he reconciled with his wife - he wears a hand-crafted gold wedding ring as large as a hummingbird - and is a devoted, happy father of William, now four, something he admits he didn't know how to be with his three children from two failed marriages.

Vicker's art - incorporating as it does the traditional and the contemporary, the Native and the non-Native, the abstract and the conventional, the dark and the child-like-seems to reflect, or be reflected in, Vickers the artist.

He explains how getting dead drunk to drive away feelings of anger, shame and fear has been replaced now by dealing with them consciously.

"It's difficult to talk about it without getting giggly and happy," he says with a grin.

Vickers' sobriety hasn't changed how he creates images, but it does affect why he creates.

"I used to create to gain self-esteem and to gain recognition. And it didn't give me that. After finishing, I'd think, 'This isn't enough'."

But some Natives oppose the commercialization of Natives images to non-Natives for financial gain.

Vickers dismisses his detractors, explaining his art can help bridge the two solitudes.

"Being a half-breed, I'm a product of two entirely different cultures. The more I can bring people together whatever their race or background, the more I feel success."