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Canadian, of course, and I also responded to that." In summers, Shives crewed as a geologist's assistant for a mining company staking claims in the East Chilcotin and upper Tweedsmuir Park region--the very heartland of the Coast Range. The experience would become central to the vitality and tension of all his subsequent artistic expression. Working with large canvas oils, the predominant ideas at the time he recollects were "Bigger" and "Don't be afraid of the paint--get it on thick!" At Diebenkorn's suggestion, Shives attended the big Matisse Retrospective at the UCLA Art On the Trail to Crown Mountain, 63" x 47" x 3", by Arnold Shives. One of the works which will be in the exhibition, From the Heart of the Wild: New Works from the Healing Place. ot the DeLeon White Gollery in Toronto. Photo: Stuart Dee Museum. "1 spent a couple of days there," he notes. "Diebenkorn was present; in fact, that was the last time I ever saw him. He may, I suppose, unconsciously have drawn me towards Matisse." Perhaps indeed: in works such as Easter Su,n,uit, Rocher de Boule and On The Trail Beyond Croon visual arts ing his paintings, and the understand ing of what he calls, "the necessity to flee complacency in the serious enter prise of art." Almost unwittingi), Shives found himself embroiled in the student uprisings of 1968. He suffered acade mic disgrace after a political gesture in support of censored fellow students and returned to Vancouver. The city's hard-edge arts community was uninterested in his eco-expressionism. A first show followed at Gastown's Mary Frazee Gallery a year later, but, with his morale at low ebb, Shives returned to the wild, mapping and surveying the head of Bute Inlet with geologist Glenn Wordsworth. Then a pair of watershed events transpired: Wayne Eastcott introduced him to the Dundarave Printmaking Workshop in West Vancouver; after a spiritual wak ening, he converted to Catholicism. Things began happening. "Basically, I taught myself printmaking," says Shives. "For a year and a half I worked in black-and-white--etchings, linocuts--then in colour. From there I moved to big colour linocuts. I looked at Munch's cutblock technique and Diebenkom's big monotype prints. "Printmaking isn't simply a matter of duplicating images," he continues. "It's a way of achieving effects that cannot be achieved any other way. There's a structural process, a logic involved. It's a patient process, and it's important always to have an awareness of the felicitous accident: the mistake that leads to new discovery." Shives' elemental print treatments of remote landscapes meshed with the burgeoning ecological sensibilities of the early 1970s. Their shamanic eroti cism in homage to the primal female principle, garnered swift notice. Shives headed to Toronto, where the patriarchal Jack Bush embraced his healthy celebration of the divine and helped arrange his first Eastern show. The exhibition at Jack Pollock's Gallery was a sellout. Commercial interest elsewhere jumped accord ingly; Shives entered private and corporate collections. With further endorsement from Bush, he received support from The Canada Council. Invitations, and then acclaim, arrived Mountain, the colour, fluidity and spontaneity integral to Matisse are plainly evident in From the Heart of the Wild. Shives was recruited into Stanford University's graduate arts program by Nathan Oliveira in 1966. The develop ment afforded Shives a two-year opportunity to master self-criticism, as well as the importance of rework- a) > 5 11