I do not feel it is correct to paint the totems for profit. It is okay to donate the painting to the original carver or his clan. I am an adopted Haida, and I would not paint someone else's art. Most people I know who paint them explain to me that they are preserving the totem. If this is the case then they should donate it to a museum. I feel this way because it is how the native carvers feel.

(RG note) Thanks, Daryl. I don't notice a lot of my native carver friends donating their work to museums. Selling--yes, donating--infrequently.

It has always
Mary-Leigh Doyle teaching at a Swintons Art Supplies' workshop seemed presumptuous that a mere onlooker could begin to understand what has been passed on through generations. Whether a spiritual image or political, historical or racial only those who lived it, breathed it, fathered or inherited it can truly understand it. I find myself torn as I greatly admire the cultural diversity we find around us but I struggle with my own attraction to the same and my right to attempt to represent it knowledgably. I do not condemn those who do not feel this way but I do question the validity of the message such work might relay.

Can you show me an artist Tucker and Babe
oil painting who isn't appropriating? Only the blind create such paintings. Modern art was motivated at least in part by an attempt to avoid appropriating and be original. Seemed to work for a while, but look at it now. If one of your readers thinks he/she is not appropriating, please post your work and let's discuss it.

Commenting on the
(left) Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez in (1656)
(right) Las Meninas (after Velazquez) by Pablo Picasso (1957) practice of using another's art to make a commentary, study, parody, etc, most artists have done studies of other's art. For example, Picasso's many studies of Velazquez's painting of the little princess and her family, or Van Gogh's study of Delacroix's Ascension from the Cross and so on. He always gave credit by calling it Homage to Delacroix or Studies of Velazquez. When I was working on my Master's degree in painting at San Jose State University , one of the Professors had been winning many national and state awards for his watercolors. One year, the artist-photographer from whom he took his material sued him and was reported to collect
(left) Pieta by Eugene Delacroix (1850)
(right) Pieta (After Delacroix) by Van Gogh (1889) fifty million dollars for the plagiarism. This incident was a lesson to all the painters in the Masters and Bachelor of Arts program: if you use a photograph, give the artist-photographer credit.

I have just returned from my first visit to Venice.
View of the Ducal Palace in Venice
oil painting
51 x 83 cm
by Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) (1755) We walked the streets for 7 days rain or shine and loved every minute of it. The city is full of artists and has been for centuries. I think every brick and stick has been painted and photographed. Does this mean we are unwittingly guilty of appropriation or copyright infringement with our art today? How much variation makes it okay? How on earth does one judge this? After all it is not what is in one's heart; it is the view of a judge that will determine if you pay.

(RG note) Thanks, Tony. I'm not in a position to say how an Italian judge might rule, but if you keep the idea of "fair dealing" in mind, and add your own personal spin to the Venice experience, go for it.

The terms of the law on copyrighting Crazy Quilt Miniature and especially the Canadian Fair Dealing Act (sect 29) are pretty vast and open to a lot of interpretation. A couple of years ago I got interested in the quilts made by the artists at Gee's Bend . Someone had given me a set of postcards with this work and this inspired me to make a series of miniatures framed under matte board and glass. Each piece has the name of the original artist embroidered under it in a kind of caption or dedication. There are 6 in all and the big quilts form such an interesting body of work, that the miniaturization is a fascinating project. I've never had the guts to show them publicly in Switzerland (where I live), though, for fear of being accused a plagiarist. I wish someone could tell me if I have the right to show them or is this one piece of the work I've done that must stay strictly private?

Appropriation requires ownership, Marichu
giclee print
15 x 22 inches which may be a cultural, and not a universal, concept. Any landscape with a barn, seascape with a boat, or market scene with stalls is depicting something that belongs to someone else, yet we don't worry (at least most of us don't) about appropriating what isn't ours when we paint them. I would like to think that we honor our subjects by making them more visible through our art. Artists can communicate the beauty, majesty, pathos, joy, or mystery in things that are usually overlooked, unseen, or ignored. Rather than appropriating a crumbling totem pole, you are expressing its power to continue to move and inspire, even as it evolves with time. Although I can't know for sure, I suspect that such power was the carver's intent, not ownership.

You worry too much about Lady Shimano
oil painting
19 x 29 inches the appropriation concept. The artistic representation of anything or anyone that is not executed for the purpose of mass distribution with the specific intent of speculation belongs to us all. In First Nation's shops there are replicas of their ancestors' arts and crafts. Tourists take millions of photographs of the same items and you worry about the spirits of the past. In my view, there is more respect in continuing the legacy than worrying about the spirits of the dead. In the copyrights act, it should be clear that only optical or electronic reproduction of one's art with precise intent of marketing is forbidden. By using your own hand, you could reproduce the Giaconda and no one could say a thing.

On commissions as far as "using" an image, I've used other people's work. When I am ready to "show" it, I ask permission. I tell them, if I sell this, I am going to send you 10%. I have sent out checks in the past. They are always glad to get the money. Hopefully, most artists stand on higher ground by virtue of their calling. We should not have to be exploited before and then again after, just as we would not to exploit others. I enjoy sending the money to the other artists. I always feel that they will be surprised by my honesty and that our money-making has then become concert. It gives them another way to receive from what they manifest.

I used Photoshop to enhance the
Memories Lost
(left) collage by Jill Ehlert
(right) original image from Wikipedia contrast of the head and printed it onto transparency paper with my Epson printer. The Phrenology image appeared in Wikipedia and stated: This image is in the public domain. Its copyright has expired in the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less. I used that transparency to transfer the black ink onto my painting. I took the picture of the trees with my digital camera and again transferred the image/ink with the same technique as the head. I pondered for a time about the ethics of using this appropriated image of the head. I have the ability to draw, but the idea of using this image was more appealing to my artistic process. I feel that this is what the spirit of collage is about - found materials and images that can have a rebirth. I would like to think that the original artist would be delighted to think that the image lives on in a painting in the year 2007.

How timely your letter is. My fingers have been flying for days concerning what my artist friends and I believe to be a copyright infringement by a major (by regional standards) newspaper photography department. The issue is whether or not they can legally sell photographs and posters of anything their photographers snap under contract. To their mind, this includes images of artwork, not as part of a larger picture, just the work. You can buy a poster of said art for under $50. They are online with the paper's copyright over the image. We have contacted an intellectual property rights attorney to see if this is some sort of loophole.

It's quite another issue
(left) Drawing by Susan Avishai
(right) Spielberg's Schindler's List when you believe your work was used as reference for another work of art. My drawing was published in 1991 in a widely sold book entitled Talking About Death by Earl A. Grollman. The film Schindler's List came out in 1993. I cannot make the claim that the image was appropriated since the case never went to court. (Spielberg's lawyers told me to back off so quickly that it made my head spin.) I couldn't possibly have afforded to fight him and his lawyers, and it's nearly impossible to prove. But it irks me to this day. What can you do besides eventually see their usage as a kind of unheralded compliment?

(RG note) Thanks, Susan. I understand your concern. Your image is, however, such a common one (I've painted something similar myself) that Spielberg's lawyers would argue that the finger positioning was just a coincidence, and typical rather than unusual. If you had drawn a three-fingered child, and that had turned up on the cover, you'd have grounds.

I work for a local Look Out
watercolor painting
8 x 10 inches newspaper. A few years back, a sister paper had used a picture of food taken by a local photographer. It was taken from the Web and placed in an advertisement. The photographer made a case of it and won. The paper had to pay a $10,000 fine. At the photographer's request the money was given to charity--it was a statement he/she was wanting to make.

I would not consider painting Magnolias
watercolor painting
19 x 23 inches of totems to be copying others' art as you use them in the total landscape to capture a way of life. Your paintings are going to a part of saving the history of the people who lived and worked there. You are saving the nature of their culture for posterity. On the other hand, I do see in others' art some of my paintings incorporated. I feel complimented that they want to copy me. Others simply use ideas of composition to produce their paintings. I have probably done the same thing without knowing it at the time. As we look at art it enters our subliminal consciousness. The problem is that artists cannot grow if they continue to use others' ideas, colors, and compositions knowingly. They only cheat themselves. Over the long haul it is how you develop a style that distinguishes your work from others.

Long reviled, Above All
acrylic painting
43 x 43 inches not so much by natives, but by the white academia, for what they call cultural appropriation, I have long been attracted by the graphic sense of the BC coastal natives. After a career in graphics and sign making, I was trained by a native carver, and discovered a latent talent for carving. I learned about the culture and the mythological characters and began to make paintings of these characters, using my own designs, giving them situ and colour, so they could be seen in a new way by those who wouldn't have given this kind of art a second glance. I have never copied any existing carving or graphic, but bring my own sense to the characters of the culture.

Good and bad,
acrylic painting I received a lot of attention for my efforts. Many non-native people told me that they had only seen the native art in its most graphic form and had no interest in it, but when they saw it done my way, it was attractive to them. Several natives accused me of dishonour and theft. I thought long and hard about that, and decided that those terms didn't describe me, my work or my motives. Other native people told me that they thought my images were wonderful and were glad to see them. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria , The University of Victoria and The Royal British Columbia Museum decided that my images were taboo, and not to be encouraged. Ironically, I noticed that almost all the books describing the native art and culture with words and pictures, were written by white academia. I have given up swimming against the politically correct current and have embarked on a series dealing with Raven, using my own mythology. I am content with that.

My husband
Out of time not out of place
acrylic painting by Ian Fry Ian Fry painted this (and a smaller watercolour version) over ten years ago - he had seen the Nisga'a canoe on Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, BC, during Expo '86. Many works of native art were being produced at the time for the international exhibition. The juxtaposition of the city skyline and the traditional art form that long preceeded it is the 'counterpoint' - but perhaps it is the title itself that brings to the forefront what may be missed at first glance. Years after the painting had been sold, Ian met a Nisga'a carver, Isaac Tait , who had come here to live and work. Later, during a visit to Ian's studio, Isaac saw a photograph of the painting and recognized it as the canoe he had once worked on. They became friends and admirers of each other's work.

We have similar problems with mis-appropriation La Gunjaconda
oil painting of our indigenous aboriginal work. Sacred family stories are ripped-off onto tea towels etc. It also goes the other way. I (being an almost white, cross Carib/English migrant) was a bit culturally annoyed recently by the work of a Waragul (Melbourne indigenous group) artist who, for her Masters Visual Arts degree entered a number of competent aquatints and embossed etchings that had appropriated heavily the 'landscape of figures' of the Tiwi people--4,000 kms and 200 language groups away. They were openly exhibited in the Melbourne's Koori Heritage Centre .

My companion and I recently discussed
Chris Short with musical co-worker Paul Vnuk Jr an experiment that showed a group of children drawing in a group. One child would look at another child's work and would start to copy what the other child was doing--but also adding their personal vision to it. He then compared this experiment with another where a chimpanzee was given a box that had to be opened in a particular way. A grape was inside so if the chimp wanted the grape it would have to figure out how to open the box. After much trial and error the chimp figured out how to open the box consistently and get the fruit. Then a group of other chimps were brought in to watch the first chimp open the box. When the other chimps were given the opportunity to try to open the box they all had to go through the same trial and error period and could not open the box from their observation of how the first chimp achieved it.

It would seem that appropriation is a natural human state and as long as we add our own twist or build on a previous work we are doing what we were made to do.