native heritage
A collection of paintings and illustrations that I’ve done to celebrate my native american heritage
visions series (2024)
I wanted to create paintings of some of my nightmares and daydreams and incorporate stories from my culture. The nightmares follow a wildfire overnight and how the animals respond, as a reminder to be mindful of the negativity of the world. Animals and nature are important to native communities and we watch how they move throughout the world. The daydreams highlight the people of my community and how we find hope and happiness in the world.
daydreams
nightmares
native american heritage month x huevember (2023)
Huvember is an art challenge where every November artist are tasked to use a different color every day to create artwork.
November is also Native American heritage month so in November 2023 I decided to participate in the art challenge and add my own spin to it by using the colors from huevember to create Native American portraits.
Indigenous People’s Day 2023
On indigenous peoples day I decided to sketch some portraits of indigenous people, which hasn’t been something I’ve done all year. When I drew the sketch for this portrait, something about it created a desire within me to take it further. I was trying a new process for rendering and taking a sketch to a more final look while not losing the essence of the initial sketch.
Summer Heat (2022)
I painted this over the summer while dealing with some health issues, keeping myself distracted watching shows like Reservation Dogs on Hulu. For this portrait I was inspired by character Bear on Reservation Dogs. I really wanted to capture his attitude and style as well as convey the heat of summer, which I was done with at the time.
Indigenous Heritage Month 2021
This portrait is the first I did after I set out to do one painting for the month of November every year to celebrate my indigenous roots. I did not plan this portrait to become the final but it was a sketch that I really like that I cleaned up. Something I would find myself repeatedly doing in the years ahead.