A dramatic black-and-red painting stands propped against one cedar wall of Haida artist Robert Davidson's longhouse-style studio. The signature image of his first major solo show in a decade, it contains the recognizable features of a killer whale but is titled Southeast Wind, hinting at meanings below the seemingly familiar forms on the canvas. Its brilliance and boldness contrast with the neutral tones of the airy, light-washed space as Davidson speaks about the spirit depicted in the painting, and the groundbreaking art of his ancestors that has inspired his work of the past 20 years.

From the evidence on painted dishes and boxes made from the 1850s to 1870s, which were traded between the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian and are now scattered in museums around the world, it's clear that Northwest Coast Native artists were pushing their artistic tradition into realms of what is considered abstraction today. On these pieces you can see mysterious black shapes that appear to have little relation to the rest of the design. Familiar elements like faces, claws, and hands are recognizable, but not placed in the usual interpretable order.

Davidson remembers getting hooked on studying these puzzling old boxes in the early 1980s, at a time in his career when he'd "maxed out" on the crest figures (traditional symbols used on ceremonial items) that defined his previous artistic output. Major Northwest Coast artists and experts such as Bill Reid, Wilson Duff, and Bill Holm were also discussing the meaning of the designs--debates that Davidson absorbed firsthand.

"I used them as study pieces," Davidson recalled during the late-May interview in his studio, which is tucked into a leafy corner of the Semiahmoo First Nation reserve between White Rock and the U.S. border. "I think of the art form as an ancient language. There's two alphabets, the ovoid and the U-shape. There was a certain way of drawing those shapes; they had a certain quality about them and became very stylized. Obviously, [at the time those boxes were painted] there was a mini-movement to go beyond what I call the classical period. What that said to me was that the artists were striving to stretch and expand on the two alphabets."

Davidson picked up on that urge for his new show, Robert Davidson: The Abstract Edge, opening on Tuesday (June 22) at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. Thirty recent works, including paintings on canvas, paper, and deerskin drums; carved and painted cedar panels; and sculptures in cedar and aluminum, will be exhibited alongside five of those inspirational 19th-century objects, brought in from institutions like Calgary's Glenbow Museum and New York's American Museum of Natural History. The show runs until January 30, 2005, after which the National Gallery of Canada will circulate it through the country until 2007.

The emphasis on painting is notable, especially since prints have dominated Native flat art for decades. Ever since 1981, when he decorated drums for a potlatch he hosted, Davidson noticed that painting frees him up to explore ideas more on impulse than when carving and sculpting.

"I feel more at ease with two-dimensional; it seems like that is more my passion," he explains. "I was really amazed at how fast I can paint compared to sculpt, for example. It [making the drums] was also the first time I was able to see how spontaneous painting was. In fact, it has been pointed out to me that my flat design is a lot more mature, or advanced, than my sculpture."

In the show, Davidson uses that sense of freedom--gained from the nature of the medium as well as the knowledge that his ancestors were edging beyond the expected--to explore the Haida alphabet of shapes. Sometimes they turn into representational images, such as Raven or Killer Whale, and sometimes they are simply explorations of form. Several of the precisely painted canvases look distinctly modern, filled with clearly abstract meditations on traditional shapes like the split U or a three-limbed shape that he's named a "tri-neg". In small doses, he also moves beyond the traditional northern Northwest Coast colours of red, black, and blue-green.

Museum of Anthropology curator Karen Duffek points out the tension between Davidson's drive to expand on, but also adhere to Haida tradition. "Abstraction in western art history is a kind of detachment, a getting away from an oppressive system," she says during an interview at her museum office. "Robert's abstraction, I consider it to be the opposite of that. On the one hand, it's freestanding, autonomous work, and on the other hand it's meant to be the absolute opposite: a rebuilding and understanding of Haida thought and philosophy, and [a continuation of] the inventiveness of the art and culture."

Davidson says he's comfortable working within the so-called limitations of the traditional forms, and sees endless possibilities for delving into them further. The show also reveals his interest in old Haida myths. Many pieces are linked to mythical figures such as kugann jaad, a mouse-woman that allows humans to cross into the spirit realm. One aluminum sculpture, titled Ravenous, depicts a Raven's head with a circle representing a human eyeball in his beak. Davidson delights in retelling the tale of Raven plucking out one eye of a whole village of people, adding that he applies the myth to the "ravenous" logging on Haida Gwaii.

Making sense of Haida traditions for the present day is a priority for him. Just as he began carving masks out of his imagination so that his grandmother wouldn't have to show him old dances with a paper bag on her head (given that no old masks remained), he emphasizes the need for current Haida art to reflect, and be meaningful to, contemporary society.

"My goal is to put the art out there, that it can speak to all walks of life. You don't need an MA or a BA or a PhD to understand the art form to appreciate it," Davidson says. "I feel that Haida art has universal qualities and values. It's not unlike Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, or European art. It stands with all art, and I feel that it's also a way of breaking out of the notion that it's very limiting, and that it is a primitive art. We have all these obstacles, and it's up to us to jump over them. It's really up to the artist, and up to myself, to bring it there."

Robert Davidson: The Abstract Edge runs from Tuesday (June 22) to January 30, 2005, at the Museum of Anthropology.