NOTES
In this painting colorful shapes with jagged, sawtooth edges form a layered abstraction. This work is from Edgar Heap of Birds’ Neuf series of paintings (neuf is the Cheyenne word for four), which he began in the 1980s. Here the artist created an unconventional landscape, eliminating the horizon line and surrounding viewers with hues of the land itself. The brightly colored shapes reference the wooded canyons of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations’ reservation lands in Oklahoma. Heap of Birds notes, “the paintings are inspired by the cedar tree family and canyon lands. These works are about sovereignty and landscape, and they speak to the issues of homeland and beauty.”
