Alcheringa Gallery
665 Fort Street
Victoria, BC, Canada
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Frog Transform-Line
lessLIE
(Coast Salish)
Northwest Coast
2008
Acrylic on arches paper
Framed dimensions: 37 3/4" x 44 3/4"
$3,000.00 CDN with custom frame
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Although not a self portrait, the expression on the face of this frog is how I feel about being an artist!
The happy frog in this design is in a state of transformation. Two salmon heads are suggested in profile in the frogs face, with the negative crescents defining the frog’s head also visually punning as the gills on the salmon heads. At the same time, two faces can be seen in the frog’s body.
The negative trigons which define the frog’s legs also create a visual pun which suggests lips, with an eye in the frog’s body which creates two faces pointing upwards.
In Northwest Coast art disCOURSE, it has been written that Coast Salish art, as a southern Northwest Coast art form, was the last southern Northwest Coast art tradition to be influenced by northern formline styles. As some Northwest Coast art scholars have written, Kwakwaka’wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth art forms were influenced by northern formline styles in historical times. Since transformation is at the core of Coast Salish beliefs, the majority of this frog design is rendeRED (positive and negative, and the red and bLACK of northern art forms) in traditional Coast Salish design elements, with a slight northern formline influence (it should be noted, though, that much of northern formline art attempts to create a feeling of tension through a combination of ovoid and u-forms, which is in contrast to the real rhythmic rippling, the real fluid flowing feeling created by traditional Coast Salish design elements.)
-- lessLIE
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