The young boy in this painting grows up to be Lakota Chief Black Elk.

Black Elk was born in 1863 along the Little Powder River in Wyoming. At age nine, he felt into a coma for twelve days and was believed to be ill by his family., who urgently sang and prayed over him. Healers and medicine men were called to cure him, but nobody realized that he was not ill at all. Black Elk was having a great vision.

 When he awoke, he kept the vision a secret until he was 17. When he shared the vision with his elders, they were astonished with his power. Black Elk grew up to become one of the greatest medicine people and chiefs of the Sioux.

This painting depicts the coming of Black Elk’s vision. It is a painting that shows the coming of a blessing and spiritual power.

The scene, including the clothing and tipi accessories, is historically accurate for 1870s Sioux life, and shows the mother and father praying together for healing.

The paints include natural pigments made from these and other materials:

·      Yellow clay from Mt. Vesuvius
·      Red pipestone dust
·      Mayan blue from Central America
·      Browns from mountain minerals
·      Ochres from Europe

“Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.

And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy...”

-Black Elk

Last weekend during an appearance/reception at Summer Wine Gallery in Oklahoma City, I was approached by a husband and wife who had bought two of my paintings and had come to meet me. The wife immediately gave me a very sweet hug, and excitedly told me that she had wanted to "come see you in person to see if you had the same spirit that we sensed in your art." Unfortunately, there had been times that other artists had not been kind or gracious to them in-person, and she had hoped that her emotional response to two paintings would be confirmed by my real-life personality. But in this case, there was yet another reason why her emotions toward these paintings had become so important to the wife.

She and her husband had lost their entire house and all their possessions in a tornado four years ago. In the calamity, her husband had to actually drive a truck into the rubble of the house to rescue her. This trauma had such a deep impact on her that she had lost many of her former memories.

While looking at the paintings in Summer Wine Gallery, my painting of colorful stones in a stream leading toward a range of mountains caught her attention.

"Honey, do I have a memory of this place?", she asked her husband.
"Yes, you do. We went there together, and you've been barefoot right in that very water," he told her.
And this memory began to return to her.

So told me that seeing this painting had helped her renew a happy memory that had been lost because of trauma, and that she needed to have the art in her house to represent healing.

She asked if she could hug me again (who could say no to that?), and thanked me over and over. Of course, I thanked her for supporting my work, and for sharing such a personal story with me. I asked for her permission to share this story, and she was very eager that I do.