Ken Mowatt

Ken Mowatt was born in 1944 in Kitanamax of Gitksan ancestry from the
Tsimshian Nation. His family crest is a Frog. He began working in the Northwest
style in 1970 and trained at the Ksan school working with Vernon Stephens, Earl
Muldoe and Walter Harris. He became an instr~ctor at Ksan in silk-screening and
wood carving. He has a deep sense of the spirituality of his people and a
sensitivity to form and figures that has made him one of the most expressive artists
of the Northwest Coast. He has been a prolific artist producing totem poles,
masks, bowls, wooden shields and silkscreen prints for private, corporate and
public collections. The Ksan style grew from Tsimshian but is modern and very
personal. Human figures are usually lifelike, often in action or interrelated with
animals. In 1977 Ken, Vernon Stephens and Sandy Heybroek contributed their
designs to illustrate the "We-gyet Wanders On" a book about the Gitksan legends
of We-gyet. We-gyet closely resembles the Raven, the Trickster-transformer of
Hiada and Tlinget history but with the difference: the Gitksan Raven never creates,
he manipulates, duplicates, instigates and disseminates but never creates. He
was no man, yet all men.