New Maynard Johnny Jr Pieces

coast salish design coast salish prints coast salish salmon four host nations salish prints

There are few Coast Salish printmakers working with traditional Coast Salish forms and shapes. In the Northwest Coast art market, there is a high demand for artworks based on formline design, as seen in the art within British Columbia's northern First Nations cultures. This demand can encourage artists from southern BC and Washington State to adopt a formline, formalised mode of production, even though Salish and Makah design is often fluid and abstracted. In general, Indigenous groups from the south of British Columbia and Washington State did not create totem poles and were not as strictly bound to crest-based social structures. Thus, much Coast Salish and Makah art contains patterns and abstractions, based on rounded u-forms, crescents, and open trigons:

Maynard Johnny Jr is a Coast Salish/Kwakwaka'wakw artist from Victoria who works in his family's Salish style. Incorporating bold and bright colours into his work, Maynard's pieces are distinctive and he is definitely a rising star in the market.

Many of his pieces have a modern flair to them. From the fluttering wings of his Dragonflies print to the fusion of figures in his Raven's True Love serigraph, Maynard captures something unique with each of the figures he depicts in his work.

Maynard began his career as a teenager, and has continued his self-directed development of art-making. Recently, he began to venture from painting into jewellery and wood carving. He is inspired by notable artists including Robert Davidson, Art Thompson, Richard Hunt, and Mark Henderson. He was featured in the Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 2 exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design, New York, in 2005. In 2009, Maynard's work adorned the cedar gift boxes that were given to special guests at the Canadian Juno Music Awards.

 


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