Native American Artists Talk About Their Art

" You have to be your own worst critic. Painting is very much a maturing process. This is nice, because at the end of your life you can be doing your best work. Hokusai, the great painter, on his death bed at 102, said: "If I could only have one more day, I could do a great painting." - Fritz Scholder

With luck, a thousand years from now art historians will still be able to see at least a few works of art created by American artists about the year 2000. If they have the chance,, I believe they will admire the work bycosmopolitan artists with Native American roots - -painter/printmakers like Fritz Scholder, R.C..Gorman and Rick Bartow.

Bartow, a prolific, highly regarded artist with Yurok ancestors, continues to work from his South Beach, Oregon studio near the places his uncle and great-grandfather lived. Scholder and Gorman both died this year. The three artists rank high among the "Native American artists" who have become known since 1950.

My enthusiasm for the very different work of these three artists may sound like the preaching of a wannabe (want-to-be-Indian) so I'll try to explain simply why I admire their work. It boils down to their skill as artists and their strong connection to their own inner selves and mine. Their paintings and prints are the twentieth century outgrowth of the spirit and design skill of those Native American craftsmen-artists who came before them, making baskets and masks still regarded within tribes and beyond as treasured, beautiful objects. The gaze, dedication and spirit of these three artists remind me of the creativity of the illuminators creating mythological creatures for medieval manuscripts or the sculptor of a Venus in the days of Classical Greece.