Untitled

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, in graphite, lower right: LAVADOUR 95; numbered, in graphite, lower left: 5/7; inscribed, on reverse, in graphite, lower right: BOTTOM ROW C RCIP/94-109 Embossed, lower left: [publisher's chop] [printer's chop]

Label

Within this series of nine lithographs, James Lavadour explores the tension between the organic flow of the landscape and the abstraction of human perception. Lavadour grew up on the Umatilla Reservation in the foothills of the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon, and his work is deeply rooted in his connection to the land. The colors and techniques employed in his artistic practice emulate the processes of layering and erosion that formed the landscape over millennia. In the artist’s own words:

"Painting is not about making pictures, rather it is a transfiguration of energy from one state into another. Painting is a model that allows us to examine the infinite in our physical reality. It is a process that is happening in real time where every micro-space of surface holds something to dis-cover. Image is merely a framework for these cosmic events made visible. I use the horizon of landscape, middle ground, and foreground because they are what I know from years of hiking and observation of the land around me. Everything that is in the land is in me."

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Exhibition History

A Decade of Collecting, 1985-1995: Contemporary Prints from the Hood Museum of Art, II. Still Life, Landscape, and the Figure, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 3-April 7, 1996, no. 45.

Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 8, 2011-March 12, 2012.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 20- July 24, 2022.

Publication History

Timothy Rub, A Decade of Collecting: 1985-1995 / Contemporary Prints Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1995, no. 45.

George P. Horse Capture, Sr., Joe D. Horse Capture, Joseph M. Sanchez, et al., Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2011, ill. on p. 59 and p. 158, no. 85.

Provenance

Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, New Brunswick, New Jersey; sold to present collection, 1995.

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Subjects