Audio recording

Framed by the burnt orange wall of a dramatic Western sunset, the five-panel painting that documents a flaming mountainside in Sunflower by James Lavadour is paired with Charging Through a Rainbow Storm by Earl Biss.  The constant force of nature’s transformational power sweeps across both image plains.  Painting with multiple layers, Lavadour builds transparent, tonal striations of a distinct mountainside to mimic the geological forms he studies.

In contrast, Biss’s expressive portrayals of Apsáalooke Nation (commonly known as Crow) horsemen rush through an unknown misty field of a colorful, dream-like storm; they are rendered in quick, striking brush strokes that veil identifying details of a precise narrative.

Sunflower’s five glowing mountainous perspectives are situated as if they were the dark center disc and four-petals of a flower. Lavadour beautifully captures the sooty smudge of burning landscape and white haze of smokey dissipation that carries over to the four other scenes. With a bright crimson blazing fire at the foot of the mountain as a focal view, the hazy glow of an orange sunset sticks to the canvas like the glowing gold of a sunflower. Through slow and labor-intensive processes Lavadour undertakes in his daily painting practice, paint becomes a vehicle to mimic the gradual layering and subsequent erosion of the landscapes he captures. Using translucent glazes, he exposes hints of each preceding layer and vestige of color, creating tremendous depth and luminosity with each stroke.

Both artists work from a perspective of reverence and communion with nature. Being an avid hiker and growing up in the Blue Mountains on the Umatilla Indian Reservation of Northwest Oregon (where he still resides), Lavadour’s paintings reflect his deep connection to this geography.  Similarly, Biss, a member of the Apsáalooke Nation, grew up between his grandmother’s home on the Crow Reservation in Montana and his father’s home on the Yakima Reservation in Washington. During Earl Biss’s time in the Great Plains, he learned tribal history from his grandmother and elders, roamed the sweeping landscapes and found inspirations for his work.

Contemporaries of each other, Biss and Lavadour are both responsible for promoting and fostering new movements and representations of North American Indigenous contemporary art within their communities through teaching, promotion, and prolific dedication to their practices. Largely self-trained as a painter, Lavadour drew his early inspiration from a wide variety of sources, from Romanticist painters such as Turner, to more kinetic processes, such as those exemplified by Chinese ink painters. Lavadour is co-founder of Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts (CSIA) in Pendleton, Oregon. As pivotal contributor to Contemporary Native American Art, Biss was highly revered by his nation for his commitment to honoring Apsáalooke culture and life in his art. In the 1960s, he was a central figure in the “miracle generation” of students at the Institute of American Indian Arts. While Western Art was focused on cowboys and landscapes and Indigenous art was often stylized, linear and depictive, Biss found inspiration in Fauvism, Impressionism, Expressionism, and other Modernist movements, catalyzing his cohort into a new genre known today as Contemporary Southwestern Art. An extremely prolific artist, he created thousands of paintings and drawings in his lifetime.