For Roger Valade, a wood sculptor from Lanaudière, the wisdom of Indigenous people and their respect towards nature is a constant source of inspiration in his artwork.
Influenced by stories of First Nation peoples, in his wood carving Valade creates themes of the Earth, animals and Indigenous traditions.
“I create the animals and Indigenous people because all of them together make the world beautiful,” he said. “It is like spiritual, it is like magic, all the animals and the environment really touch me, I want people to see their beauty.”
Valade employs ancestral methods, including oven-dried wood, fish glue, and earth oxides and pigments of fossils to create colours.
“Using colours, I try to revive all the traditional clothes of people who lived at those times,” he explained. “The goal of my sculptures is to give Canadians the feeling of respect to the environment as well as to provide memories about Indigenous livelihood.”
The piece “Broken Arrow” presents a Native warrior, who is “close to nature, close to the earth, free and self-confident, who never hunted just for fun, he hunted to feed himself.”
For his sculpture “Eternity” the entity of the wolf comes out of the frame. Valade chose a male wolf playing with a female because “love is continuous, love is always there, it never stops.”
“Mother Earth” features a globe that a mother bear is holding in her paws, based on the belief that “life came from the marriage of Mother Earth and Father Sky.”
His research on First Nation peoples, their traditions and territories led Valade to discover pictures by American photographer Joseph Curtis, who captured images of members of the Sioux, Apache and Lakota nations.
“When I sculpt an Indian, I am inspired by Sitting Bull because I like his gaze,” Valade said. “There is no hatred. He is a warrior; he is a healer.”
Born to a Métis family, Valade spent his youth in foster homes in Montreal, then worked in the restaurant industry for 40 years. However, 20 years ago he returned to his roots in Ste-Émélie-de-l’Énergie, where his grandfather, an immigrant from France, had lived and where Valade “finally found peace and serenity.”
“This beautiful mountain gave me all the elements I needed to be able to express my creativity,” he said. “I want to demonstrate respect for nature through all my works. I want to interpret nature through animals, humans and the environment.”
Valade never knew his Indigenous grandmother, who was from the Saint-Michel-des-Saints area, near the Atikamekw in Manawan. He never spoke her language, which belongs to the Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi linguistic group, but it is important for him to pay tribute to his ancestors.
His wood sculptures have been displayed in various exhibitions, in museums and private collections in Canada, the United States and France.
Every year Shefford resident Yuriy Kotenok goes snowboarding in Saint-Michel-des-Saints and stays at the Auberge du Lac Taureau, where a large collection of Valade’s sculptures is located.
“I was impressed with the professionalism and the details of the sculptures,” Kotenok said. “If it is a human face, it is done accurately with such detail that I can recognize the emotion. If it is an animal image, there are many specific elements, and I am impressed it is done by human hands, and it takes around a year to create one sculpture.”
Kotenok was attracted by the theme of Indigenous tribes, spirits and the connection of these tribes with the nature. That’s why he purchased the Valade sculpture “Le bandit”, depicting an eagle catching salmon. He said it represents the strength and power of the bird, with 500 carved feathers.
He thinks people have become too distant from nature. “But nature is eternal,” Kotenok said. “It gives inspiration, because wildlife is first of all about our health, clean water and the environment.”