Northwest Pacific Coast Red Otter Chasing Salmon Cloth Placemat

Prey and Predator. That is the theme of my new Haida form-line styled otter chasing salmon drawing. I'm not actually sure otters eat salmon, but I like the idea to put a predator and prey into a Yin and Yang symbol. Do prey and predator not complement each other? Due to my family in British Columbia, for instance Vancouver BC, Haida Form-line art has been part of my life. The Pacific Northwest coast is a beautiful place where I spent some happy holidays and a couple of years ago I decided to learn some of its native art. Form-line is an indigenous art made by the First Nation people of Northwest coast of North America. The term form-line is invented by Bill Holm. We use the word since 1965, but the art is many hundreds of years old. The idea is to create a flowing continuous line with increasing and decreasing thickness. We get negative spaces with a dominant black outline. The negative spaces are filled with form-line type ornaments or elements. The main forms are ovoids, U forms and S forms. With these forms the artist composes a complete form-line.