“High upon a bluff as the sunrise begins to filter through the clouds somewhere in the Dakotas, a Lakota Chief Elder raises his hands in prayer as he overlooks the valley below as he chants and gives thanks to The Great One, or The Great Spirit. The Native Americans were extremely spiritual and prayed each and every morning before the start of a new day giving thanks to Mother Earth and all the blessings which he has been given.”

That is my description for this painting. My fascination with the plains Indians and their culture as well as my recent personal losses  created this piece. Coming from these losses and researching how the Indian culture was based within the spiritual the concept for the painting began as I was reviewing my photo reference library looking for something that would catch my eye and give an emotional connection with the viewer, at least that is always the hope when creating a piece of art. Sometimes it works and unfortunately sometimes it does not, but I was fairly confident that if this was done correctly that it might hopefully stir up emotional responses from the viewers.

The overall size of the piece was small at 11”x14” and was a pre cursor to a larger piece that will be visited this year. Many times through the miniature stages if it turns out as I hoped then I might move on to a larger piece. With this one that will be the case. The thing about these minis is that there isn’t much room or need for me to get lost in too many details, or at least trying to simplify without losing the overall feeling, and that is what happened in this work and primarily done with a couple of reference photos frankenstiened together to create the final image. The color palette within this work would be fairly straight forward as this is basically a tonal piece filled with mood with low light and a silhouetted figure. Beginning with the sky the entire piece was done first, not worrying about the figure at all and painting the entire cloudscape and concentrating on the tonal values of the sunrise from my reference photos. After drying overnight (Liquin used to speed up the drying time) it’s now onto the figure. Using a thinned mixture of Transparent Oxide Red and Cobalt Blue for base the figure this was loosely roughed in and set to dry overnight. Using Liquin as much it tends to dry quickly for the next days work. The figure edges were thinned as to give the impression of light around the figure which comes through from the initial sky background colors painted in first. Ah a method to the madness here...this gives a cohesive feel to the work as the light from the surroundings is working in my favor. If you look closely at the original the looseness placed in of the initial mixture is evident. Letting this set overnight the rock ledge and details were scrubbed/painted in and the bonnet and ermine were added which blows in the warm morning breeze. Again not too much detail, just enough to know what is going on without getting too bogged down. After stepping back as I always do I realized that it was finished and I need not do anything else to it. For once I let it go as is. This was an emotional piece for me from the start and seemingly for others which has been received nicely with many kind comments. I found that it has different meanings for each individual which is what a piece of art tries to do with viewer responses. For this I am pleased and blessed.

The painting came together quite quickly which isn’t the norm, it was one of those pieces that once in a blue moon just comes out onto the canvas without reworking as I liked what was in front of me and there was no need to rethink or rework any areas. A rarity...

Peace to you all.