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.