Drawing

These 62 small works (3223/1-62) comprise a collection of drawings in pencil, ink, pencil crayon, and felt pen made by the artist between the years 1968 and 2015. During that period the artist has identified himself by the following names: Ron Hamilton; Hupquatchew; Ki-ke-in; Kwayatsapalth; Chuuchkamalthnii; and Haa’yuups. The drawings are, for the most part, applied to the backs of bookmarks acquired from a range of bookshops; some are applied to other pieces of paper or cutouts from his earlier silkscreen prints. Many of the images represent killer whales, often in conjunction with accoutrements and symbols of Nuu-chah-nulth whaling. The juxtaposition of bookmark and representation of Nuu-chah-nulth himwits’a, or narrative, is a deliberate and meaningful placement of two distinct knowledge systems in relationship with one another. Ephemeral drawings like these were not created for the market; the artist has long made them for himself and sometimes as gifts for relatives and friends; they are a way of sharing his knowledge and experience about Nuu-chah-nulth ways of knowing, thinking about, and being in this world; they are expressive of what he calls kiitskiitsa: marks made with intention.

A drawing on a yellow-orange coloured bookmark. The front-side is hand-drawn in pencil. The central drawing is a killer whale with large fins extending from the top and the bottom of the whale's head. The whale's tail flukes, decorated with an ovoid, are depicted on the bottom right of the bookmark. Eight creatures extend outwards from the killer whale's body; two of the creatures have single arrows pointing outwards toward the bookmark's edge. A small human skull is lightly drawn near the whale's tail. The reverse-side of the bookmark is a machine-printed advertisement for the book, "An Everyday God" by James Taylor. At the top is a small image of a tree on a hillside. The lower half of the bookmark is a paragraph of text and the publishing company's address.