Jack Shadbolt, and the Coastal Indian image

Jack Shadbolt was inspired in his formative years by his contact with Emily Carr and with her brooding works portraying the remnants of Indian villages against the overwhelming wilderness. He made sketches of Indian artefacts and the Cowichan Reserve in the 1930s, but it was only after World War II that elements of Indian art began to show up in his style. Marjorie Halpin finds in the changes in the way Indian forms occur in Shadbolt's paintings an appropriate expression of the changing attitudes of British Columbians to Native society and the political will the Native people now manifest. The place of Indian motifs in Shadbolt's painting can be broadly correlated with the cultural quickening of Indian society in recent years. They reveal his emotional sympathy with Kwagiutl, Haida, and Tlingit forms and his deep response to the Indians' spiritual and historic presence in the British Columbia environment.… (more)