Walking in Their Footsteps
Inspired by historic ledger drawings, Oreland Joe paints a warrior’s view of the Great Plains in a new show at Legacy Gallery.
Get a couple artists together in a group and a joke usually percolates to the surface: “The painters want to be sculptors, and the sculptors want to be painters.” Every now and again we get an artist who can do both at a high level that merits recognition. Certainly Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell come to mind, as do living artists such as George Carlson and John Coleman. But now add another name to that exquisite list of artists— Oreland Joe.
For the last several years the New Mexico painter, of Southern Ute and Navajo descent, has steadily expanded his studio to include not only stone works for which he is well known, but now also oil paintings the likes of which the Western world has never seen. Joe, inspired by historic ledger drawings that documented Native American life in the 1800s, has used his canvases to tell stories about the warriors of the Great Plains. He accomplishes this by calling out to ledger art with his distressed and worn-looking canvases that suggest age and history, and then painting in a stylized form that brings ledger art into the 21st century without abandoning the minimalist presentation of ledger’s storied past. The resulting work has been transformative for the artist.
“It’s been quite an adventure. I’m enjoying where it’s taken me and what it’s doing to my technique,” Joe says. “With each painting I’m learning how to lay down more paint, how to evolve and how to say what I want. Painting has a lot of freedom for me: freedom to move things around, freedom to explore new ideas…each day is a learning experience.”
The artist, a member of Cowboy Artists of America, will be presenting new works at a solo show starting February 27 at the Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. He will be showing 12 new works, seven of which will be paintings that reveal his new path forward as a two-dimensional artist. The paintings feature Plains Indians warriors, many decked out in full regalia, as they traverse the plains, gallop into battle and bear witness to the greatness of the landscape. The figures
and horses are rendered in a clean, concise style that can convey motion, action and momentum. The works also feature symbolism, though sometimes the symbolic elements— everything from dragonfly symbols and animal footprints to arrows and beaded objects—are obscured or very lightly painted so as to not overpower the central composition.
“One of the things that has been defining my thoughts is how these symbols are current—they exist in the present—and they are also past reflections. And then there’s also a future aspect with some of the symbols, like the rattle or some other magical things going on, that are symbolic of the hope of achieving victory,” Joe says. “My main objective going into each painting is getting the main image complete. All the symbolism is secondary, but it’s also vital since it deals with the past, present and future. The paintings are teachers. They are reflections of what I’ve learned in the last 30 years of life.”
When Joe began this deep-dive into ledger artwork several years ago, he sought out some of the best examples of ledgers in the country. And then he went to see them himself, and to speak to the curators who were instrumental in their preservation and scholarship. His travels were immensely informative and began to give him a base of knowledge to draw from as he began to paint his own work. “The research at the time was important, but it was also very general,” he says. “Right now I’m going beyond that by keying into actual places. When I visit a battle site, I can pull off five images from just one visit, especially after I’ve researched it and read about it. I can see the paintings forming in my mind. I’ll get a rough idea, and then I’ll let them sit for a month. And when I return to it, they reveal themselves all the way.”
This happened recently when he visited the location of the Fetterman Massacre
in Wyoming. In 1866, Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors ambushed soldiers from Fort Phil Kearney—the battle was a decisive victory for the Native Americans. The artist visited the battle site and was immediately struck, even while turning down the road to get to the site, at the importance of the location. “Just as we turned off the main road I had this overwhelming feeling come over me. I’m so glad we stopped because I could then picture the place in my mind. It’s not big—maybe 200 yards long, and kind of sunk in,” Joe says. “It was important to be there, because I was walking in their footsteps.”
It’s that attention to history that helps inform his work—paintings and sculpture—and also helps propel him forward into largely uncharted territory in his career. It’s that attention to detail that can also be seen in his newest works at Legacy, including in White Horse Leading the Dog Soldiers, a work showing three riders, two of which seem to almost acknowledge the viewer. “One of the things that is noticeable about this one is how each of the horses is painted differently. I never re-create the horse action. Each horse is painted in a unique way— I’ll never copy the last horse I painted,” he says. There are no horses in The Horned Buffalo Warrior, but it does feature something that is not often shown by other painters. “I liked the idea of showing the back of the figure with all his regalia. So many painters focus on the front of the warrior figures, but I like the idea of seeing the whole guy’s medicine all the way around.”
Another work in the new exhibition is The Day the Sun Stood Still, showing three riders under different stages of a solar eclipse. The painting was informed by a trip through Wyoming. “I was with [my son] Bo on that long drive from Casper to Sheridan and there’s basically nothing out there, but then here comes this one cloud all by itself. It produced a huge rainstorm and hailstorm for five minutes. And then it was gone,” he says. “It made me think of the major eclipse that went across the plains in 1860. I could imagine these riders looking up and seeing something they had never witnessed in their lifetimes.”
In addition to the painted, ledger-inspired works, Joe will also be showing stone works, such as Protector of the Powder River, which is made from Indiana limestone. The show runs through March 15.