Timothy W. O’Connell III took home the “Spirit of the Northwest” award from the juried “In The Spirit Contemporary Native Arts Show” exhibit in late July.

The show, held by the Washington State Historical Society at the Museum of Natural History in Tacoma, honored O’Connell on July 22 for his painting “Cloudy Day At The Beach,” a piece in which the original text is written in the S’Klallam language.

The painting is oil on canvas and uses a limited palette to depict a cloudy day.

“A cloudy day at the beach can still be beautiful,” O’Connell said. “I wanted to convey that through the use of a limited palette, as well as symbolism that is both elemental (the eagle in the sky, the salmon in the sea, the wolves on the beach) and symbolic — the eagle and salmon are used in the Jamestown S’Klallam seal, [and] the wolves recall the story of the Wolf Mother.”

The work of art will remain on display at the museum in Tacoma until Sept. 24.

O’Connell is a S’Klallam citizen, raised on the Big Island of Hawai’i, who earned a fine art degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa on Oahu. He now lives in Sequim, working by day at the Jamestown totem carving shed and spending his nights in his home studio painting into the wee hours of the morning.

O’Connell has three paintings on display at the new Field Arts & Events Hall in Port Angeles.