Running Eagle Falls in Glacier National Park is named for Pitamaka, "Running Eagle," a Blackfeet woman who performed her vision ceremony at the site in the early 1800s. Pitamaka became a warrior of great renown, even keeping a place in her father's warriors' council lodge. Running Eagle Falls remains a site of significance to the Blackfeet people to this day.
    This painting shows a group of young Blackfeet men passing in front of the falls, and spotting a red tailed hawk--a holy omen. I love this site in Glacier--the loud rush of the cold water and the rising mist are just amazing. It is almost magical how the slanted stones of the falls turn from flinty grey in direct sunlight to a warm, luminescent blue-orange at dawn or sunset. I often use golden sunlight in my work, and on the sloping shelves of stone it just seemed perfect.

I start by cutting linen to size, and adhering it to a birch panel. I use an acid-free conservationist's adhesive made of liquefied plant starch, which will preserve the canvas.

Mounting linen to panel creates a more durable ground for the painting. It resists warping, will not have to be re-stretched every few years, and won't tear or puncture.

A rough pencil sketch helps establish the composition.

A thin wash of acrylic paint over the gesso helps block out the image.

To create a painting, I usually begin with linen or canvas mounted to board (birch or Ampersand artist's board), using archival liquefied plant starch as an adhesive. This prevents the canvas from ever being harmed by punctures, cuts, or loosening of stretcher bars. I begin with a rough sketch using watercolor pencil (because regular pencil graphite smudges when painted). This is where the basic composition is established.

I paint from background to foreground, usually. At first, I use a large brush just to block out colors. There is no detail yet, just shapes, in order to play with the painting's values and color palette. For the painting "In Beauty It Is Finished," I experimented with crimsons and reds, but wanted the blue sash behind Suzie (the portrait subject) to help create contrast between her and the warm background.

As more background details become satisfactory, I finally begin work on the main foreground subject. I knew the left edge of her face would be a particularly critical part of the painting, so I underpainted in Payne's Grey acrylic (the dark smudge on the face area) so that I would have a neutral ground to work on, for color accuracy. Notice that the foreground is still just rough, large brush strokes.

I am not yet working on fine details. I've brushed in simple color guides for the turquoise necklace, and begun to lay down the different colors of her skin tone. There is even still some unpainted canvas showing through at this stage! Before going into "full detail mode," I need to be sure that the main subject has enough value contrast with the background to give her "strength" in the painting. Too much "red on red," and she'd be lost.

Now I've started adding in the more precise details, like the turquoise and silver necklace , and her glasses, and the bundle of yarn behind her. Notice that her face, hair, and hands are still painted very coarsely, and that I've gone back and added additional details to the background. Throughout the process, I am also creating new paints out of hand-milled earth pigments and oils.

Now it's all detail work. The last touches to her skin make her face seem luminescent, and her hands are carefully given their wrinkles and edges. The apples are done. The glasses are given careful attention. The necklace and bracelet are completed with a hog hair round brush, and the vertical parallel warp threads of the loom are filled in using a natural rigging brush. This has become one of the paintings of which I am most proud.


Addendum, February 2014: Susie Yazzie passed away on February 13, 2013. This painting, which has always had a very special place in my heart, found its way to a new home one year later on February 14, 2014. The couple who chose it fell in love with it, and told me that they wanted her to be in a home where she would be treated with reverence, and that she represents strength and wisdom to them. I told them I was thrilled that Susie had found her way into just the right home, and that her new caretakers would see this painting not as a commodity but as something very personal.