One day back in 2014 as I was painting in my studio I was startled by a loud thump emanating from my gallery window. At first I wondered whether someone had thrown  a rock or perhaps even a potato against my window so I hurried to see if I might catch sight of the culprit. To my shock and surprise, I found myself face-to face with a rather discombobulated Peregrine falcon. I have to say that I was nearly as stunned as he was. Yes, I can tell the difference between the males and females of the species. I knew that birds often collide with windows mistaken for skies that were not and I also knew that Peregrine falcons stoop for their prey at at speeds approaching 200 miles an hour.  Had my disoriented avian friend fallen victim to his own chase or was he a messenger, a herald of what was to come?

Of course, during the moments of that incident I really didn’t think that deeply about it in quite the way I am in this moment. Yet, I have found that life is funny that way. In 2014, the renovations of my studio and gallery had only recently been completed and I was enjoying a dream come true.

 Painting in the studio a la Vermeer’s The Art of Painting and struggling with a traditional kidney shaped palette. 2013.

As dreams go painting in a beautiful studio is one thing. Running a gallery was quite another, especially given my location. It didn’t work out as I’d hooped yet I have no regrets about having given it a try. Between my opening of Rapid Water studio – Gallery I got to paint with some really cool guys – Eric Manella who along with his wife Alana Benham own and operate Atelier de Bresoles in Montreal’s Old Port section, Steven Rosati a great Canadian portrait painter and one of Eric’s students, Eduardo Simões Fernandes. No doubt we shall soon have another paint date.

As wonderful as that was I started to feel restless. I had commissions for portraits and other paintings. Sometime in the spring and summer of 2016 I started to think about what possible projects my assistant Jason Vallieres and I might possibly get into to segue down an alternate path. Jason’s parents had recently moved to London, Ontario and his father left him a treasure trove of wood working tools. At first we thought about making easels that we could sell. We looked at making Studio easels and pochade boxes but that was something we weren’t ready to get into right away. Sometime in the late fall we were talking and I said we ought to do something, that something being the designing and tweaking of a finely crafted wooden palette that was comfortable to use, well balanced and tastefully yet functionally shaped. I had previously seen and thought about purchasing a palette from one of the boutique palette makers. They all had the idea of producing ergonomic palettes. I looked at at the pictures on the various websites, even tried one on for size, yet I came away with the audacious thought that I could improve on the design – build a better mousetrap as the adage goes.

All through November and December of last year Jason and I work on our project. I drew all kinds of variations and styles, some larger, some smaller and others of a medium size. I tweaked the curves while Jason scaled them up as patterns on foam core sheets. Sometimes I would say we ought to maybe trim this down, only to find the idea I’d thought was good wasn’t so great. So Jason would reattach pieces to the foam cores boards. The one concept we grabbed hold of and held fast to was that all of the palettes designs needed to start with a direct line relationship from the crook of the elbow to the thumb-hole. The measurement of that line was maintained as an average for all of the variations we produced and was the point of balance for every one of those designs.

Next, we set about cutting our templates out of mdf sheets and from there produced a number of different sizes and shapes fashion from 1/4 inch Baltic birch. Our first thought was to finish the palettes with a mixture of tung oil and Orangine. That was a four-day process and while they looked okay, we decided we wanted to try a different finishing approach. Rather than deciding to immediately moving in that direction with all of the palette designs we opted to focus our efforts on the model which would ultimately be our introductory flagship model instead.

Before we arrived at the palette we now are selling we shopped for different possible stain colors, sta rting with looking at more traditional neutral mid-value browns. While shopping for those a grey stain caught my eye although I wasn’t entirely convinced that grey was the way to go. Back in the shop I suggested grey might work fine if the stain would produce a mid value grey color while maintaining the beauty of the wood grain. All this while I had been toying with and literally dreaming up different names that had a cultural sound, something that might hearken to our Indigenous backgrounds. I actually did dream of one logo which would have had the palette be a dream-catcher and given the name ‘Dream-scaper or Dream-sketcher. Happily, as soon as I saw the birth of the first grey stained palette it struck me like that herald who struck my window in 2013. The light bulb in my brain clicked on and I announced to Jason that the name of our palette had struck me like a bolt from the sky and thus the Peregrine Palette was born. Now you tell me was this coincidence or synchronicity? I choose the latter and it is my deepest hope that you will choose to paint with a Peregrine. When you do I am certain you will enjoy it for a lifetime of painting with our very best to you.

Niawen kowa/Thank you very much

Kakwirakeron Ross Montour/ Jason Vallieres.

  http://www.peregrinepalettes.com

Sekon, skennen kowa ken, (Greetings, Is all well with you?) and welcome to our site and to our blog.  I thought that a good way to introduce folks to Peregrine Palettes would be by telling you all a little bit about myself, where I was born and live, as well as how the Peregrine palette came into existence.

As the late, great Sam Cooke once sang, I was born by a river in a little town, that river being the mighty St Lawrence river in the village of Kahnawake.  Kahnawake, which means the place ‘by the rapids’ has been a continuously occupied Mohawk settlement since the mid-1600s. Founded by the Jesuit order as a mission settlement for Indigenous Catholic converts, Kahnawake and its people have always been entrepreneurial in spirit. Even prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Mohawk people and their fellow Iroquois nations were involved in trade. In the 1600s the medium of exchange was fur and my ancestors played key roles in the fur trade. Many of our people acted as guides to the coureur des bois and voyageurs as we were well schooled in the waterways and trails of this continent. During that period, Kahnawake also was the site of a major repair and manufacture facility for the large trade canoes or as they were also known rabaska. These rabaska were the freighters of the fur-trade era shipping supplies and trade items to the great trading outposts of Hudson’s Bay in northern Quebec and Fort William in the northwest in what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario.

 

 Frances Anne Hopkins – Shooting the Rapids

The voyageurs of that day often paddled 16 hours a day and, often enough portaged the heavy freight canoes and all the goods they contained up and down steep, often wide trails, some as much as a mile or more wide. Many of the sturdy men in these boats were Kahnawakehrho:non (the people who live by the rapids). In those days everything needed to survive was produced by hand. Paddles, gunnels, the cutting fitting and root lacing of the rabaska ‘skins’ were all made by hand by Indigenous artisans and  voyageur alike. Finely wrought snowshoes, baskets and containers all required a high level of skill to make. These items were both beautiful and functional.

Closer to home, the Mohawk women of Kahnawake fashioned beautiful items from bags to mocassins, made of moose and deer hide and highly decorated with porcupine quillwork and later beadwork.

 Iroquois beaded and quilled mocassins.

This tradition of craftsmanship carries on up to this century with many of our women continuing to fashion beautiful traditional articles of clothing and adornment for ceremonial and everyday use. While the beginning of the 20th century saw many of our men enter the ironwork trade erecting the bridges and skyscrapers of New York City and beyond, across the height and  breadth of North America, there are still Mohawk men who make tools, baskets, canoes, cradleboards and even caskets with skill and artistry.

In my life’s journey I traveled with my family to the Mohawk enclaves of Brooklyn, N.Y. where I attended school and upon entering high school studied art at the High School of Art and Design and later at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. There, I haunted the museums of the city from the old Heye Foundation Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Natural History as well as all of the art museums and galleries from the Metropolitan downtown to the SoHo galleries.

Perhaps because one of my earliest recollections about art was of my mother sitting painting in oils at our table in the evenings after making beaded dolls, and washing dishes. I sat quietly and transfixed as the face of a Native woman appeared on her canvas panel, done entirely from her imagination. Something about seeing my mom, even then at 4 or 5 years of age struck me as magical. It was the smell of the linseed oil and paint. I attribute that act of hers as being seminal to my desire to one day become this creature people call an ‘artist.’ and why I have always gravitated to the portrayal of the human face and figure and most especially of my own people.

I believe all of this history, both personal and corporate, of my people has directed my steps as an artist and as a lover of my people’s history. I believe that all of my journey has figured its way into the development of the Peregrine Palette. Niawen kowa for sharing a moment with me. – Kakwirakeron Ross Montour  (To learn more about Peregrine Fine Art Products go to: )

www.peregrinepalettes.com 

Pt 2 to follow soon. The R&D of engineering the Peregrine Palette.