Autumn is finally here! Every year I am stoked for the crispiness of fall. Time to break out the wool socks, beanies, sweaters and gumboots. I’ll miss those warm mornings and long days, but there is something to be said about just getting cozy and creative in this less chaotic time of year. This year I have a studio to retreat to when the weather gets rocky which is something I certainly look forward to!
October being the month of fall colours and Halloween, I did up some wild salmon for you in their more ‘ghouly’ stage of life. The return to spawn to the river from which they came. Starting from tiny eggs buried in beds of fresh water rivers, they go through many stages of fresh water life before venturing out to the open ocean for a few years before making the trip back. Between deforestation and destruction of natural habitats, fish farms, sea lice, natural predators, human industry, climate change, rising ocean temperatures, pollution and other threats, these incredible fish have a tough life. Wild Salmon are a foundational species to life on the Pacific Northwest. Wild Salmon have been a huge part of First Nations culture for ages. People and many species of wildlife depend on the marine-rich nutrients that wild salmon provide. Salmon watersheds provide clean drinking water, and because they are composed of flowing rivers and dense forests, they absorb carbon to slow climate change! The commercial fishing industry also supports local economy and communities along the Pacific Northwest. Wild Salmon are important for so many reason and I am glad to see more and more organizations fighting to protect them and restore their habitats.
You’ll see this page in Tofino Time magazine this October. Please feel free to download from my site as well, but please… pretty please… leave my contact info on the bottom if you are sharing them in your business, or other public spaces. :)
** I love doing these colouring pages and I hope you do too. I am so happy when I see them printed out in restaurants, or used in schools, and I love to see people colouring them! The other day however, I went into one of my favourite shops in the city and saw kids colouring one of my pages. Normally I would be so stoked to see that, but this time honestly I felt cheated and disappointed. The line of contact information at the bottom of the page was cropped off! Now I completely understand that images posted on the web are at risk of this, and perhaps it was an honest mistake, but I have included that contact info at the bottom of every upload so it was definitely deliberately cropped. That info is my calling card. That is so if someone sees the pages and likes my work, they may hire me for a project. I do not get paid for the hours of work these pages take, nor do I charge to use them, but that ability for ‘exposure’ (yup, artists hate that word), and the projects that may come of it is in essence how I do get paid for them. If you want me to keep doing these, then please, all I ask is you leave my info at the bottom of the page. If that is too much to ask, then I will just have to stop giving them away for ‘free’. **
