Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun

Yuxweluptun was born in Kamloops, British Columbia, and grew up in Vancouver, where he currently lives. He attended residential school for two years before, by Canadian mandate, he and other First Nations children could finally attend public school. He received his Honors Degree in Painting from the Emily Carr School of Art and Design in 1983. Due to the influence of politically active parents who were deeply involved with their local Native communities, Yuxweluptun is a vocal advocate for First Nations’ issues on treaty rights, racism, and social injustices. His love of the environment—as he experienced it and how it has significantly changed in his lifetime—are the dominant subjects in his paintings. An avid colorist, he considers his large scale paintings Neo-Native history recorders that contain elements he calls “visionism,” his own type of surrealism, and “ovoidism,” a philosophy or approach to the recent abstracted forms in his works that also include sculptures.