An introduction to the Pacific Northwest Coast abstract formline art style in terms of cultural context, forms and conventions.

1. Pacific
Northwest
First Nations
Art

2. Cultural Context
The Transformation
Long ago on the Pacific Northwest Coast, before the first people came , the
world was in a state of constant flux. This was a time when animal people
walked the earth, swam in the seas and flew in the skies. These animal
people could shift from animal to person and back simply by donning the
skin of one or the other. Earth dwellers only came to be in their present day
forms when the “Transformer changed each into a particular species
according to the person’s activity, attitude or behaviour at the time of the
encounter”
Here on the east coast the mythological “transformer” or “creator” of the
Coast Salish people was the raven (represented symbolically at left).

3. Pacific Northwest Art Explained
abstract representational art with heavy emphasis on faces and heads
faces may be friendly or fierce
Friendly?
Fierce?

4. Animals can be recognized through their teeth, jaws, tails, limbs and other
distinctive characteristics...
Here we see two animals...
What do you think they are?

5. What about these?

6. The transformations founds in myth can also be seen in two dimensional design
as forms are abstracted, entwined, rotated and placed in unusual places and often
constrained spaces.
Haida Dogfish, Bill Reid

7. Purpose
1. To make the supernatural world visible and present.
Northwest coast art is intended to affect the viewer strongly. The artist is
communicating about power (their own or their chiefly employer’s); they are
also communicating about power itself. To the extent that the artist can strike
the viewer, power is transferred.
affecting presence = supernatural power = social power
2. To make the social system visible - art provided the status symbols of the social
system.

8. Apprenticeship & Learning the Basics
Traditional Northwest Coast art is structured upon and within a certain set of
principles governing:
Design
Composition
Colour

9. South Coast Art Style
Area in green at left exhibited this style, here :)
Society was not clan based
Limited amount of art production
basis of art usually religious
Meaning and significance of symbolic images therefore
often kept secret
Usually made of simple standard units such as
ovals(ovoids), circles, U shapes (solid or split) and
negative crescents, trigons, slits and T forms
heads exaggerated in size and rarely shown in profile - often
circular, earless, and hairless

10. Ovoids
Really oval like in appearance
Convex bottoms and bilaterally
symmetrical
Ovals represent joints in
appendages, tails, wings, eyes,
heads and palms
Most have floating inner units
(positive and negative spaces)

11. U Shapes
Short form representing i.e. fish scales
Long forms representing i.e. wings
Commonly had curved open slits and rounded
ends
U shapes could represent feathers, fins, flukes,
tails, fingers, gills, scales and ears.

12. T shapes

13. Cultural Appropriation versus Cultural Appreciation
● Using someone else’s cultural symbols to
satisfy a personal need for self expression is an
exercise in privilege
● a lack of respect for the sacred history of
another culture without having knowledge of its
significance.
● a long history of Colonization has placed
Western Anglo culture in the dominant position
with respect to other cultures. Therefore, the
use of the traditions, symbols, and codes of
these cultures by western Anglo communities
always includes the risk of oppression.
● What is wrong with this picture?
● What are we doing today in this workshop?

14. Let’s Draw
Which image should we use? Why?

15. Contemporary First Nations Art
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun

17. Your Turn!
Draw your personal totem animal in the Pacific Northwest First Nations style.
Use at least an 18” by 24” piece of drawing paper.
Trace the true outline of your animal lightly on your paper
Sketch in the formline outer contours of your animal
Use the shapes as illustrated for you on the handout to construct a symbolic representation of your
animal (see Kim’s book for details on eyes, flippers, legs, etc. if you get stuck)
Choose a colour scheme and plan how you are going to colour your shapes by marking each shape
lightly with your pencil. Do not mark the white.
Use the markers provided to colour your piece