A detailed knowledge of the traditional cultures of the coastal peoples of British Columbia (Canada) and Washington State (United States), and of the geographic settings in which those cultures flourished, are the source materials to which Gordon Miller and Bill Holm apply their artistic skills. Their realistic and often dramatic reconstructions depicting people, places and events from the past are based on careful study of museum collections, archival documents and photographs, and archaeological evidence. These paintings help us understand what life must have been like for the peoples who inhabited that strip of Pacific coast lying between the sea and the rain-forest.