Death Roe

I have been observing sockeye salmon for years.  The interior of BC; where I live, is the home of the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.  The salmon return to Adam’s River in Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park to spawn.  Once the eggs (roe) are laid and the male has fertilized the roe both parent fish will die.  The fertilized eggs will become fry and remain in the Adam’s River untill the following Spring, once they are large enough the new fish will start the long journey to the Pacific Ocean and on the fourth year of their life they will return from the Pacific to their birthplace on the Adam’s River to spawn; and so the cycle of life and death goes for the Sockeye Salmon.

Every fourth year of this cycle there is a predicted “Peak Year” of Sockeye Salmon returning to the Adam’s River.  I was asked by the curator of the Salmon Arm Public Art Gallery, Tracey Kutschker to be one of ten Shuswap/Thompson artists to interpret the phenomenon of the 2010 Sockeye Salmon run in the BC interior. I created the installation piece, “Death Roe” which is a multi-media (20 paintings, 12 fish lines, 6 sockeye salmon fish ties, one large paper mobile, hundreds of colourful clay roe, and a reimagined rivers edge) retelling of the Sockeye Salmon run story once they make it to the mouth of the Adam’s River. In my work I look at the salmon that have beaten the odds and have swam upstream from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the Adam’s River where they were born four years before.  In 2010 the number of sockeye salmon that returned to the Adam’s River was 3,859,983 the largest amount of returning fish in almost a century.

Individual Paintings

The Death Roe Installation is available as a whole. Each individual painting is also available.

Death Roe Series

River Dancers

The Salmon sing a song of joy as they return to the river home that winds through the river bed laid down for them

The Sockeye Salmon have lived seasons of their lives in this pristine Shuswapian bed

As I watch there is a loud display of water sounds and songs as the salmon find their place on the river

These paintings represent fleeting close-up glimpses at Salmon prancing in and out of the light as they sparkle with sound and movement towards their life mission

Swimming Upstream

* Note - Firenesters Spawning (middle left) and Fish Fertilizer (tree, far right) are no longer available. Replacements will be painted when necessary.