I don’t know if you’ve seen enough of my colored-pencil Paffooneys to tell this, but for an old white guy, I draw a lot of Native Americans and am rather deeply in love with American Indian images. You may have seen this dream painting I posted before.
The girl in the painting is a combination of this warrior’s daughter and myself. I was naked in the dream and a female, facing this huge ghost-stag. The dream came while I was reading Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebe Hill. Maybe that book was the beginning of my Native American obsession. Who knows? I am a crazy dreamer. But that wonderful book turned me on to the rich spiritual life that the Dakota people lived. I identified with it so completely that I dreamed myself into their culture. I was also struck by the manner in which a Native American culture handles education. The grandfather is in charge of the boy’s learning. He teaches by story-telling. Here you see the grandfather in Sky Lodge teaching his grandson. The girls would learn very different things from their mothers and grandmothers.
I am also entranced by the life of the people expressed in dance and ritual. Dance has deeper meaning than we white guys normally assign to it. Dances could be magical. Of course, the notion of a “rain dance” is the result of too much simplification in movie scripts and ignorant popular white culture. Dance could connect you to the Earth, the Sky, and the Spirit World. That’s what this most recent Paffooney shows.
So, you can see, I don’t really understand the concept of moderation when it comes to my obsessions in the world of colored pencil art. Hanta Yo! Clear the Way! In a sacred manner I come!
Catch a Falling Star 