The Protector: Journal of Process and Meaning

I started this painting as many others from this series, looking through the latest issues of high end architectural magazines and sourcing inspiration from my studio archive and online photos. I arranged imagery in my head and drew out loose compositions until I felt the structure had an opening to begin painting. I usually begin at the center of a canvas with coyote and a chair, and work outward from there. The mountain painting in the background at one point was a night sky of stars. It reminded me of a cold night and that coyote stories are often told in the winter season for Navajo people. I decided to continue painting into the blackness of the sky and a mountain began to emerge. I soon realized I needed a stronger reference for what I was trying to create and found an old black and white image of the Matterhorn. 

As with the mountain image, the rainbow began as a series of compositional pencil scratches, indelible in the right hand corner of the canvas. I scribbled those marks to break up the vertical line of the wall’s corner. A technique I use to throw off balance in the process, in order to find it again. I knew from the outset I wanted some form emerging into the space, but it wasn’t until I was well into the painting that the rainbow seemed the appropriate idea as a motif. “The Protector” as a title for the painting came to me after the completion of the work. The rainbow in this regard is the originator of this theme of protection for the Diné. It is the protector of our stories, our life ways, and the world we live in. I painted its appearance seemly wrapping, bending and melting its way into the space toward a Navajo rug on the room floor, with some intent for it to be seen as a physical manifestation. 

An Indonesian primitive sculpture was something I imagined the home owner might have in their collection. I imagined further their European lineage and sense of wealth and the long history of westerners collecting, taking or reappropriating these spiritual symbols. These Indonesian forms in particular, remind me of the influence indigenous culture has had on western art since the beginning of the early 1900’s, profoundly influencing the surrealist artists of the time. 

To create a bit of drama, coyote stares back and focuses intently on this sculptural object in the foreground. This is the moment in question…the intersection of spiritual beings, of the ancestral and the modern.