My work is narrative. I love to paint but my investments range from self indulgence to social position. My painting process is self serving; however I believe that because of my social and political positions my work takes on an activist role. I believe creating art is a necessary part of being a healthy human. Painting from a narrative is necessary considering my cultural history. I narrate my personal stories through paintings as a religious and therapeutic process. But through telling my story I bring to light injustices and struggles of American Indians.
I am conscious of the relationship of my work to abstract expressionism. I am the opposite of the white male painter who, as Darby English says, “occupies a category of cultural neutrality and social entitlement.” I am a minority, a woman and my upbringing is rooted in an underprivileged background. But I do not have the luxury of only being concerned with creating a painting whose primary purpose is formal beauty. As a Native American I struggle with loss- a loss of cultural identity and a loss of family plagued by alcoholism. As a woman I am subject to being identified as emotional. I openly love the subjects I paint, a behavior that may be categorized as feminine or maternal. But like Pollock I think of my painting process as nature. Pollock referred to the religious Navajo sand paintings which have very similar ideas to Chinese landscape paintings. In ancient Chinese landscape paintings the artist paints the landscape in order to achieve a spiritual relationship with the subject. As the Chinese artist paints the mountains he travels through them and climbs to peaks that may be otherwise unreachable. The Navajo sand painting is created to suck illness out of a subject. Much like the Chinese landscape paintings a Navajo sand painting emphasized the act of making rather than the end product. I am not concerned with recreating the photograph but I am interested in the experience achieved through the intense dissection of a photograph of a loved one.
I choose to work from the amateur family snap shot. I chose this because the family photograph seems the opposite of an abstract American painting. The snapshot is generally taken by people unschooled in fine art and usually has many formal mistakes. I enjoy the naivety and honest intent to capture an emotionally relevant moment. The family snapshot documents an individual’s personal life and offers the viewer the opportunity to see inside. Until recently with advancements in social media, the family snapshot was once a genre of photograph that outsiders had no access to. Edward Curtis, a photographer whose work populates much of the Smithsonian collections of American Indians, possessed little honesty in his photos. At first glance Curtis’s photographs seem to document indigenous people’s daily lives, but upon further investigation one will discover that Curtis often had his models wear costumes that were from other tribes and posed his models to exaggerate their exoticness.
I want to produce an object of desire for the audience. I accomplish this by using paints rich in texture. I also push for my art to have a resemblance of a keepsake. I want my work to relate to that sweet personal object that you lovingly tuck away. But my intention is to obtain a desired moment with my dad. By spending time starring at details of a photograph I can project a moment and develop dad in my mind. I want to be with my dad so I paint him and I want to know my dad so I construct him.
My paintings aim to straddle the line between white and other. I use techniques that are revered in the Anglo -European ideals of art making. As a white painter, I embrace the modernist role of the artist, a mentally ill creative wrestling with their tragic pain. But I also aim to create a flatness and crudeness that is common in the art of the “primitive” minority. The flatness and narrative references painting styles of plains tribes such as the Arapaho; in which paintings depict battles on hides. As an American Indian I narrate contemporary battles to be lessons for others. I embrace the shamanistic view that Native Americans possess mystical spiritual powers. If I am magic I can evoke my powers to bring my father back and build a relationship with him.
I want the viewer to turn their attention from the narrative back onto themselves and their relationships with family and loss. I want the viewer to relate to me and our shared human condition. Glen Ligon’s text paintings postpone the closure of identity by using quotes from people other than him. I use my titles to do the same, leaving the possessor of these family members open. I purposely title my art work with general relationship titles such as, “Dad” instead of “My Dad.” I want to avoid personalizing titles in a hope to leave the viewer open to project themselves into the “I” of the narrative.
Now that minorities have made it a social and economic position to be able to afford art school the dominant white male has pronounced painting as dead. I am an ancient person; it is common to understand the Native American as an ancient/dead character. Of course neither of these pronouncements of death is true. So I have become a ghost or a dead person practicing a dead art form.
In my effort to transcend my ethnic and social categories I fear that I am feeling self hatred. But I am also afraid to admire and enjoy my cultural differences. I fear taking on the position of the white observer that admires the ethnic specimen from afar not understanding the trials of being the other. I want the audience to struggle to find my identity just as I struggle to find mine. There is no answer. I am afraid of sacrificing my authenticity. So it is imperative that I continue to balance my whiteness and my otherness. My brief interaction with my family only complicates and enflames my struggles and the intangibility of my identity. I am forced to forge an identity and forge a family.
I am conscious of the relationship of my work to abstract expressionism. I am the opposite of the white male painter who, as Darby English says, “occupies a category of cultural neutrality and social entitlement.” I am a minority, a woman and my upbringing is rooted in an underprivileged background. But I do not have the luxury of only being concerned with creating a painting whose primary purpose is formal beauty. As a Native American I struggle with loss- a loss of cultural identity and a loss of family plagued by alcoholism. As a woman I am subject to being identified as emotional. I openly love the subjects I paint, a behavior that may be categorized as feminine or maternal. But like Pollock I think of my painting process as nature. Pollock referred to the religious Navajo sand paintings which have very similar ideas to Chinese landscape paintings. In ancient Chinese landscape paintings the artist paints the landscape in order to achieve a spiritual relationship with the subject. As the Chinese artist paints the mountains he travels through them and climbs to peaks that may be otherwise unreachable. The Navajo sand painting is created to suck illness out of a subject. Much like the Chinese landscape paintings a Navajo sand painting emphasized the act of making rather than the end product. I am not concerned with recreating the photograph but I am interested in the experience achieved through the intense dissection of a photograph of a loved one.
I choose to work from the amateur family snap shot. I chose this because the family photograph seems the opposite of an abstract American painting. The snapshot is generally taken by people unschooled in fine art and usually has many formal mistakes. I enjoy the naivety and honest intent to capture an emotionally relevant moment. The family snapshot documents an individual’s personal life and offers the viewer the opportunity to see inside. Until recently with advancements in social media, the family snapshot was once a genre of photograph that outsiders had no access to. Edward Curtis, a photographer whose work populates much of the Smithsonian collections of American Indians, possessed little honesty in his photos. At first glance Curtis’s photographs seem to document indigenous people’s daily lives, but upon further investigation one will discover that Curtis often had his models wear costumes that were from other tribes and posed his models to exaggerate their exoticness.
I want to produce an object of desire for the audience. I accomplish this by using paints rich in texture. I also push for my art to have a resemblance of a keepsake. I want my work to relate to that sweet personal object that you lovingly tuck away. But my intention is to obtain a desired moment with my dad. By spending time starring at details of a photograph I can project a moment and develop dad in my mind. I want to be with my dad so I paint him and I want to know my dad so I construct him.
My paintings aim to straddle the line between white and other. I use techniques that are revered in the Anglo -European ideals of art making. As a white painter, I embrace the modernist role of the artist, a mentally ill creative wrestling with their tragic pain. But I also aim to create a flatness and crudeness that is common in the art of the “primitive” minority. The flatness and narrative references painting styles of plains tribes such as the Arapaho; in which paintings depict battles on hides. As an American Indian I narrate contemporary battles to be lessons for others. I embrace the shamanistic view that Native Americans possess mystical spiritual powers. If I am magic I can evoke my powers to bring my father back and build a relationship with him.
I want the viewer to turn their attention from the narrative back onto themselves and their relationships with family and loss. I want the viewer to relate to me and our shared human condition. Glen Ligon’s text paintings postpone the closure of identity by using quotes from people other than him. I use my titles to do the same, leaving the possessor of these family members open. I purposely title my art work with general relationship titles such as, “Dad” instead of “My Dad.” I want to avoid personalizing titles in a hope to leave the viewer open to project themselves into the “I” of the narrative.
Now that minorities have made it a social and economic position to be able to afford art school the dominant white male has pronounced painting as dead. I am an ancient person; it is common to understand the Native American as an ancient/dead character. Of course neither of these pronouncements of death is true. So I have become a ghost or a dead person practicing a dead art form.
In my effort to transcend my ethnic and social categories I fear that I am feeling self hatred. But I am also afraid to admire and enjoy my cultural differences. I fear taking on the position of the white observer that admires the ethnic specimen from afar not understanding the trials of being the other. I want the audience to struggle to find my identity just as I struggle to find mine. There is no answer. I am afraid of sacrificing my authenticity. So it is imperative that I continue to balance my whiteness and my otherness. My brief interaction with my family only complicates and enflames my struggles and the intangibility of my identity. I am forced to forge an identity and forge a family.
