A Closer Look at the Artist

One of my first memories of creating imagery was on the Navajo Nation, near Four Corners. My parents would drive into town to the only payphone and call home to my grandparents. James, my brother, and I would play with the beetles on the ground below a tall light pole. They would fall down after catching the street light high above us. I remember drawing in the sandy dirt and playing with the beetles while listening to my parents talk.

Dirt and sticks turned into school projects with white paste and crayons. My next strong memory was of being in trouble in school and being put in the art supply closet and crying until I realized where I was, and my creative juices took over. Paper, supplies, and alone time.

Soon after starting my first primary grade I was told I was different from my friends. I cried for weeks after my mother told me I wasn’t the same as my Navajo and Hopi friends. It was then I discovered that the little brown boy inside me was who I really was. My identity formed and my expression of creativity blossomed. Youthful summers were filled with the annual road trip to the Pacific Northwest, in the city of Renton and Orcas Island, Washington. Ferry boats, dungeness crab and tall cedar trees continued every summer to feed my passion for creativity, and thus sculpture found its way into my life. Often forgetting to eat, sleep and talk to anyone for hours became the norm and creativity flowed from my heart through my hands to my family and friends as creative gifts of self. My art became flowers and sharks and anything that was flowing and graceful in form. Soon I was working alabaster stone and Granite.

Understanding the framework of my creativity, I often turn to that little brown boy inside, for continuity and guidance in all of my connections and inspiration. Life has turned and twisted and formed within me a quiet place where I treasure up those insights, textures, and colors only to draw on them again and again. All while learning, connecting and expressing through my hands, what my heart intends. I feel my way through life and express my creativity through texture and color. My work is to create feelings and connections within myself and others. Painting and sculpting are just a few ways I connect and share my story and perspectives.

I follow a pattern and strict guideline of philosophy for navigating life and experiences. That guiding factor is what feels right to me and not what people tell me.

I find truth in the feelings, textures and colors behind words and conversations. Listening to people and feel intentions, I tend to sense the connecting patterns all around them. I am affected greatly by people and places and the new connections they have on my perceptions and reflections.

This collection of work represents those connections that exist to all things and all beings. I hope you can find a connection here in the textures, colors, and creativity from my heart, through these hands, to YOU.

From that little brown boy, “Natoni”…..thriving inside this creation… ME.

I invite you to enjoy our new connection…