01.07.2017 04:51 PM

Ken Mailhot, Terese Marie Mailhot and Queen East

Exploring in a used furniture shop on Queen East today, Cheyenne found this. She said I should come look. 

It was stunning. It was incredible. We bought it right away. It was a huge find. 

The artist is Ken Mailhot. The piece is called Man Emerging.  It will go on our walls amongst the dozens of other West Coast prints, masks and carvings – and three totems. 

We went looking for information about Ken on the Internet. We found some things, but then we found writing about him by his daughter, the author Terese Marie Mailhot. 

Some is here and here. And below:

The National Film Board of Canada debuted the documentary as a piece with immediacy and no external narrative. I’m a woman wielding narrative now, weaving the parts of my father’s life with my own.

I consider his work a testimony to his being. I have one of his paintings in my living room. “Man Emerging,” is the depiction of a man riding a whale. The work is traditional and simplistic. Salish work calls for simplicity because an animal or man should not be convoluted. 

My father was not a monster, although it was in his monstrous nature to leave my brother and I alone in his van while he drank at The Kent. Our breath became visible in the cold when Dad came back to bring us fried mushrooms. We ate the bar fare like puppies to slop.

Wow. 

She is an amazing writer, and her Dad was an amazing artist.

Two huge finds in one day. You never know what you will find on Queen East.

10 Comments

  1. dave constable says:

    Holy smokes! If I bought something like that I wouldn’t be able to pay both income and property taxes until 2020. I have a couple of local pieces (Stz’uminus – on the island), and that’s about it. But I quite like this painting/carving work, including work from further north, from Tahltan artists. It influences some of the non Aboriginal artists out here with its symmetry and flow. It kind of fits where we live now.

  2. Kevin says:

    Stunning is right. That is a piece that stops you in your tracks, until you realize you’re not breathing.

  3. the salamander horde says:

    .. that a print.. or painted .. a knockout !

  4. Robbie says:

    Any idea what this print is worth?

  5. Jennifer says:

    I have an original print of Ken Mailhot’s “Man Emerging” work. Please email me at jgirard_98@yahoo.com if interested.

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