Patricia June Vickers is a painter, a healer of trauma, a member of the eagle clan from the northwest B.C. village of Gitxaala and a victim of incest who is inspired not by the church as an institution, but by the teachings of Jesus. Given her unique story, the Ts’msyen woman’s portrayal of residential schools, decolonization and Christian symbols are challenging, and more frank and multi-layered than what we normally hear these days.
explores the tragic complications associated with what she calls “the atrocities” committed by clergy and others in Canada’s residential school system, which her father and grandmother attended. In an unsettling, profound way, the exhibition interweaves traditional Indigenous spirituality — with sacred animals and birds — with her devotion to the 2,000-year-old ritual of communion, which she has continued to cherish since first taking part in it as a 15-year-old. The younger sister of the acclaimed Ts’msyen artist Roy Henry Vickers, she is a powerful painter in her own righ