In high school, Purdy was introduced to painting with watercolors, falling in love with the flow of the paint and the way colors blended on the paper. But Mom was really good at making sure we had crayons and paper and would proudly display our work.” She was also an avid reader, and loved to illustrate the stories, “imagining what a scene would look like.” Her family also regularly visited their “giant extended family” back in Oklahoma, where she marveled at the ceremonial dances they attended. “It was very difficult to make friends, and I spent a lot of time by myself or with my younger sister, Mary. “I went to 10 different grade schools just from kindergarten to sixth grade,” she says. A member the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, she was also “an Air Force brat,” born at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and moving with her family to wherever her father was stationed. Purdy has long followed her own distinctive path, both in her art and in her life. “I’ve just taken it up a twist and made it my own.”ĭolores Purdy, Caddo Sisters, colored pencil on antique ledger paper, 16 x 13. “Well, I do refer to it as ‘ledger-like,” she says, emphasizing that last word. Add the overall brio of her composition, and it can seem at times as if she has breathed into the medium her own fresh, delightfully irreverent spirit. She renders one of her horses in light azure, and the three figures wear shirts in shades of hot pink, turquoise blue and sherbet orange. “I do have fun with it,” she laughs.Īnd the colors! Purdy decidedly does not deploy the muted tones of almost a century and a half ago. Harry, it seems, has fallen off his steed. Only then might an art lover of discernment and curiosity realize that a fourth horse-whose head, neck and shoulders are entering the composition from the right-has reins flying wildly above his head, free of guiding hands. A closer look reveals that one of the heads is turned directly toward the viewer with an expression of blank puzzlement, as is the face of the horse ridden by the rider behind him. Sure, she renders the trio of bison pursued by spear-wielding Native Americans on horseback using the mostly two-dimensional, almost symbolic approach seen in the works of Purdy’s forebears, with a simplified setting of Plains covered in merry tufts of green grass, backed by rolling tree-dotted hills. Yet, a Purdy creation like Y’ALL SEEN HARRY? gives ledger art an entirely present-day, wryly feminist spin that subtly deflates masculine bravura. That’s when Native Americans, exiled to reservations and deprived of the buffalo hides and natural pigments with which they traditionally depicted triumphant acts, began recording the events of their lives with black ink, colored pencils and watercolors on the paper pages of ledger books. Dolores Purdy, Ya’ll Seen Harry?, colored pencil on antique ledger paper, 13 x 16.ĭolores Purdy’s use of bold colors and patterns gives a contemporary twist to traditional ledger art.ĪT FIRST glance, a ledger drawing by Dolores Purdy may seem a natural descendant of the Native American art form first developed by Great Plains tribes in the later decades of the 19th century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |