Mi’kmaw painter and multidisciplinary artist Alan Syliboy’s art career began in the early 1970s when an innovative art education program aimed at Indigenous youth took him to New England and introduced him to other artists, art forms and possibilities. But it was by returning home to Millbrook, Nova Scotia, and wrestling with how to create art in and for his small community that he truly began to find his voice. Drawing on the iconography of Mi’kmaw petroglyphs and stories, Syliboy’s work blurs the lines between traditional and contemporary Native art, reaching backward while also making his viewers aware of “time’s rupture and inevitable distortion.”
 
Ray Cronin

Ray Cronin is a Nova Scotia-based writer and curator. Between 2011 and 2015 he worked at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia as both curator and director. He is the founding curator of the Sobey Art Award.
Cronin has written on visual arts for magazines and newspapers for over two decades and is presently the visual arts blogger for Halifax Magazine. He is also the author of Our Maud: The Art, Life and Legacy of Maud Lewis and the ebook Alex Colville: Art and Life.