Rising Spirits

From the "about-damn-time" category - here's a new post from me on my most recent art. This piece is entitled "Rising Spirits". It's an acrylic painting of a fancy dancer performing in a field of grass under the shadow of the eagle floating in the sky. The concept came to me as I researched native american dancers for my exhibition space at Red Earth 2011. The work completed for that show will appear here through the next few months. And I will be talking about each piece or series.

Rising Spirits is an homage to the spirit shown by the native american Fancy Dancers as they perform. If you've never been to a pow-wow you are missing a true visual experience. The energy of the dancers and the animation of their costumes is really something to see. Because this is my first native american series I spent a lot of time on research. I am 1/4 Chickasaw and proud of it. But I've never done too much painting in that theme because I knew that when I started it I would want to know what I'm talking about. I really wanted the work to be authentic to the dance performed and yet also allow my imagination to come through.

In "Rising Spirits" I spent a lot of time looking at Fancy Dancers and their costumes and the meaning of the symbols on them. The graphics and meaning of most of the symbols is very specific so I didn't want to just paint a lot of triangles and diamonds and call it good. The dancer is very close to the models I found but not exact. I change several items just to keep it original to me. The dual perspective of the painting is done to give the viewer a swirling feel to the whole piece as it shows what the dancer might see as he looks up and what the eagle sees as he looks down. The colors are bright because I just love'em strong. This piece took me a bit longer than expected because I was just wanting to be true to the detail of the Fancy Dancer's costume and it was my first time to paint one. I'll be faster from here because I've now covered that ground.