Curator & Collector

Raven and Whale, taken from the 2010 Roy Henry Vickers calendar In the previous six posts, we looked at the various formal elements of the aboriginal art of the northwest coast. These included shapes: ovoids, U-forms, split U-forms, and S-forms. We also saw how the form lines (in black) create negative white shapes, often crescents, [...]

Bill Reid’s Mythic Messengers This is the sixth post in my series–inspired by Hilary Stewart’s book Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast–on the isolated forms of aboriginal northwest coast art. Each of the five previous posts has focused on the lines, shapes, or spaces used in the First Nations art of the Northwest [...]

Slightly altered image of negative spaces taken from Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast The negative space in northwest coast art is as important as the positive space. Stewart explains the presence of the negative shapes: crescents, circles, Ts, and Ys, as follows: In the northern art style particularly, the form lines curve, [...]

Image of a wider U-form taken from Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast As mentioned in the previous post, the U-form shape has a couple of basic derivatives: the S-form and the split U-form. (There are also four-way split U-forms, and I have seen something that certainly could be termed a three-way split [...]

Slightly altered image of a U-form taken from Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast A second basic shape of the aboriginal art of the northwest coast is the U-form. U-forms seem more capable than ovoids of greater variety in terms of the proportions of the width to the height, although that may be [...]

Slightly altered image of an ovoid figure taken from Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast The shape shown above, now conventionally termed an “ovoid,” is the basic art shape of the First Nations of the northwest coast. As Hilary Stewart notes in Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast, this is essentially [...]

An essential book: Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast During the past few years, I have begun to be more interested in understanding the native art of the northwest coast as art; some months ago, I found this little treasure of a book that has helped me to take steps towards doing just [...]