"Big Man"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

I've been a bit stagnant lately with respect to painting.

It's normal.  Typically happens after a long stretch of painting for a show.  The well goes dry.  It's normal.  

To the surprise of many, I get inspiration from television.  An image will appear or colors will stand out that impress my brain.  Subjects come up and I make a mental note.  I watched a segment recently about the Osage Indians in Pawhuska, Oklahoma - I was born somewhat near the area - so I paid a little more attention to the story which was mainly about the horrible murders of many tribe members in the early 20th century.  

The photos of the Osage were stunning.  The faces, the bone structure... I am always consumed by the human face and form.  That was why I began the BUST-ED series and continue that curiousity.  So I've been pouring over photographs from over 100 years ago of various Native Americans, in awe of their beauty and dignity.

And it's something different for me - to paint with black and white.  It led me to this new painting - a portrait of Big Man.  He was of the Sicangu Oyate Tribe, a branch of the Lakota people who's home is South Dakota.  I don't know much about this gentleman, but Big Man in many tribes all over the world means the patriarch or a highly influential individual.  I found him to be an inspiration.

"A Way Of Life"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

When I began listing works of art I'd like to feature portraying the American Spirit, I remembered this exquisite painting in Crystal Bridges titled The Indian and the Lily by George de Forest Brush, done in 1887.  It's one of the many pieces in the museum that knocked my socks off.  It is so intimate in size, so beautifully painted, so tender, a glimpse of a moment in the life of a Native American Indian.

A little bit about the artist, George de Forest Brush - born in Tennessee, raised in Brooklyn and Darien, Connecticut, he trained in New York then later in Paris under the brilliant artist Jean-Leon Gerome.  Gerome is one of my personal favorites and I can use the same descriptions of his work - intimate, exquisite, precise realism, glimpses into personal lives.  The influence of Gerome is so very evident in Brush's paintings.

After Brush returned to America and in 1882, he ventured west with his brother and found his subject, America's native people.  For more than a year he lived among the Arapahoe and Shoshone in Wyoming and the Crow in Montana - creating paintings and etchings of Indians 'far removed from the reality of contempory Indian life'.  Brush chose to depict the Indians in a 'timeless environment undisturbed by the advent of the modern'.  He resented the rapid industrial revolution and how it negatively affected the Native Americans, instead he desired to portray them in their way of life and their connection to the natural world.

An article I found tied Brush's painting to the story of Narcissus, the perils of seeking an unattainable perfection and the novel Imensee, a story of a man reaching out for a perfect water lily but nearly drowns when he falls into the pond, getting tangled in the roots of this perfect flower.  He climbs out of the water, looks back at the water lily floating calmly - a metaphor for the struggle of the Indian tribes maintaining their way of life in a complicated, progressing world.

You should take time to look at more of Brush's amazing paintings.  They offer peace and tenderness in these days of anxiety and unrest.

"100+ Faces, No. 114"

4 x 4"

oil on panel
sold

Part of my ongoing series of portraits painted from mugshots, the chiseled profile of a Native American Indian man.