The Art Gallery

of 

John Knapp

 

               Celilo Falls
                On the Columbia River

 

This page updated: 05/24/2006

For thousands of years the native Americans of the Pacific Northwest worshiped and took sustenance from the salmon. As the salmon migrated up the Columbia River to spawn, natural falls stood as obstacles. Leaping up and over these falls provided an opportunity for the tribes along the Columbia to spear and net the fish as they jumped. During the early 1950s, the U.S. government dammed the Columbia and so flooded these traditional fishing sites.

My emphasis here is to capture some important elements in the scene as well as confer upon it the drama it deserves. This painting shows the Columbia as it flows downstream, however, the main flow appears to be moving upstream. The unusual shape of these falls, in fact, provided the structure for this irregularity, and both the pounding of the falls and the clear shape of the hills on the Washington side of the river accentuates this appearance. The Indians constructed unusual platforms to give them an advantage over the fish. Here I have shown three of those platforms, however, in actuality, there are more than double that number. Removing the majority of the scaffoldings allows a clearer view of the falls and directs the attention of the viewer toward the fishermen and the falls itself.


Celilo Main Falls Wallis professional paper Image size 23" X 17"

Further to the west, the water travels through basalt channels and forms rapids and a series of smaller falls. In these locations, native Americans have similar scaffoldings from which to snare salmon. Suspended from cables are a series of trolley buckets which provide a way for the fisherman to travel above the rapids back to the shore. Such conveyances and their cables crossed from each island of the falls. Another conveyance was by boat, which was used to travel up from the base of the falls to each accessible island. In this painting, I wanted to emphasize the fishermen above the turbulent waters. I have shown the ropes used to secure them to the platforms as well as the complex construction of the platforms. All signs of the trolleys and cables have been removed in order to direct the attention to the act of fishing itself. Only a red canoe is left to show how some have traveled to their location. Clutter covered the platforms, and that, too, has been removed.

The strength of the water was created with very dark soft pastels in balance with warm whites and green/pink/blue reflections from the churning rapids. Whereas I have shown salmon jumping up the falls in the first image, what I wanted in this painting was the calm wait above the violent water. The most challenging part of this piece was the values given to the basalt channels behind the fishing party and the quiet feeling of flow in the water from upriver.


Celilo - West Falls Wallis professional paper Image size 23" X 17"

 

 

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Outsource Images:  CD's are available to artists who would like digital photos of various places in the world.  Outsource images are now available for:

Southeastern Oregon: Leslie Gulch and Succor Creek Canyon
Glacier National Park
New England
France, Belgium, and Morocco
Bryce and Zion Utah

Outsource image CDs are images which are free from copyright restrictions. These CDs are created so that artists can have an opportunity to paint from images taken from far distant places and yet be able to use those created images as their own.  I encourage you to link to the pages listed below and consider this new concept.

For more information go to: http://www.bmi.net/knapp/outsource.html

 

 

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