Tips to identify Coast Salish art style
Coast Salish carver Luke Marston at work in his family's carving studio.
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To identify the Coast Salish art style look for ovals plus consecutive crescent shapes, carver Luke Marston said.
The cultural style learned from his parents, master-carver Simon Charlie and others seems inherited despite years of sharpening his craft.
Marston said the Salish style of the island’s southeast coast differs from styles of the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwakawakw people of the island’s west, and northern coasts respectively.
Styles outside Salish territory may have “more ovoids (often strength circles) that don’t even exist in Coast Salish design.”
Salish work also has suggestive, defining lines around lips.
Arrow-tip shapes in faces are another Salish method, said Marston who studied Salish design at Victoria’s Royal B.C. Museum.
“Coast Salish uses the external form-line of symmetry,” he said of fish scales, eyes, feather patterns and more.
“Coast Salish is a bit more realistic than stylized.
Marston admitted differences between Salish and other Native art styles can be subtle.
His mother, carver Jane Marston, said, “You have to study the different styles.”
“Even the colours we use are more subtle than other styles.”
To view the Marston family’s Salish work, visit www.inuit.com and www.alcheringa-gallery.com.
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