IceBear – Artist

Born in 1953, for most of his childhood he was in the care of Indian and Northern Affairs. The essence of what makes IceBear art has been with him always; as a small child, drawings were his only means of communication. His first public art “commission”: a paper collage “stained glass window” for his church, was completed at age 10. It remained in place until the church could afford to replace it with real stained glass.

Thanks to the foresight of an art teacher, and funding by Indian and Northern Affairs, he attended the Toronto Artist’s Workshop. As a teenager, Chris supplemented governmental support by creating paintings that friends sold on city streets. After high school, he attended Sheridan College but left after one year to join the art department of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He soon moved on to further his practical education in a series of different positions in commercial art and design, including a stint at the venerable type house Typesettra, where he helped develop many of the fonts now found in your computer. He eventually opened his specialty design boutique. He moved to Vancouver in the early ‘80’s, to continue as an independent designer specializing in unique assignments.

With his arrival on the West Coast, and his acclimatization to the West Coast lifestyle, his early love for fine art started to re-assert itself. He moved to Vancouver Island in the early 90s and gradually replaced his commercial work with paintings and sculpture, beginning with graphic styles that drew on his years of commercial line work and progressed through realism and then to the amazing abstract and impressionistic visions that have become the hallmark of IceBear art.

Ice Bear’s huge public artworks (created between 1997 and 2001) were extensively covered by local media, he also received a 1999 Community Arts Award for the contribution he and his public art had made to the Capital region. The comment made at the time: it was the first time this award had been to a full-time artist, it generally went to curators, gallery directors, or teachers.

Since then, IceBear art has appeared in exhibitions and been placed in collections, private and public, in Europe, the United States, Asia, and Canada. View Ice Bear’s Chippewa art inspired works below or contact us to learn more.