Winter comes early here. Increasingly so, with climate change, but even without that, first snow usually comes in October. Depending on the year’s weather patterns, we may get more autumnal weather afterward, or the season may settle in for the cold duration.
So a wintry image doesn’t really feel particularly out of season to me. Indeed, for those whose lives are still governed daily by the seasons, it’s not: Temperatures have been dropping into the mid-forties and lower since the second week of September, and we’ve already begun taken stock of this year’s weatherization needs, talking about target dates for filling propane bottles and wrapping pipes and hoses, making sure the animals ares set for the thermometer’s first plunge below freezing. I noticed a couple of days ago that the horses’ winter coats are already just beginning to come in; soon they’ll be as shaggy as the buffalo pictured above.
Many of you who are existing clients as well as friends have already seen this image; the artist had it turned into greeting cards, and we’ve bought dozens of them from him over the years. We didn’t acquire the original painting from him until a few years ago. The artist, Frank Rain Leaf, is one of Wings’s oldest friends; they grew up together, young artists who called each other “brother.” Frank’s art turned primarily toward pen and ink, paints and canvas; Wings’s, toward the three-dimensional forms and shapes of sterling silver.
We have several of Frank’s paintings for sale, a number of which have yet to be added to the site. Two are realistically detailed black-on-white line drawings, a matched pair; the others are acrylic in characteristically brilliant colors. All are explorations of various aspects of traditional life, with the careful attention to detail for which Frank is known. This is perhaps the simplest, sparest of his paintings, certainly the least detailed I have ever seen, and yet its simplicity is deceptive.
From the painting’s description in the Other Artists: Wall Art Gallery here on the site:
A herd of buffalo approaches over a snowy horizon in this small painting by Frank Rain Leaf (Taos Pueblo). A full moon rises in the frigid winter sky, reflecting off the icy ground beneath their hooves, while a single red-tailed hawk keeps watch over their path. Unframed; 9-7/8″ high by 7-7/8″ wide (dimensions approximate).
Acrylic on canvas stretched over wood
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
His choice of colors, few though they are, work in concert to tell the story. The turquoise is, of course, ubiquitous in Pueblo art, imagery, and daily life; it appears in the jewelry that is part of traditional dress and even on the door- and windowsills of the old village homes, reflecting the sheltering blue of the sky above.It’s a desert shade that defies categorization: People who analyze colors put shades of blue into the “cool” category, but I don’t buy it; some of the hottest flames burn pure blue. So it is with our blues here; skies that reflect off the winter ice and snow, turning them a frigid hue, and the warm, inviting turquoise of the summer skies. Coupled with the lilac shade common to our skies at dawn and dusk, the gradient is both stark and gentle, and it works. The moonlight, silvery-white at first glance but more detailed on closer examination, lights the buffalo’s trail and highlights the world beneath their hooves: a horizon gently curved like the earth itself, the round hoop of moon a microcosmic torch reflecting sun’s glow and earth’s form.
The buffalo . . . well, I’ve written about buffalo before. This is their season, powerful beings with powerful spirits, able to withstand the rapid weather changes of autumn and the privations and vicissitudes of winter. The sight of the herd thundering over the hill . . . it’s an image that stirs memory: one I’ve actually seen, and one I’ve only felt at the soul-deep level of ancestral awareness. And while the skies light their progress, so, too, does their fellow animal spirit guard their journey — the red-tailed hawk, a common motif in Frank’s art, traveling with them as dusk descends.
There is now a whole art-market subgenre known as “small paintings” (or, for those created with media other than paint, “small pictures”). The last I knew, there was a gallery just north of the town limit devoted exclusively to such pieces. But Frank placed these with us long before it became a “thing,” with people who saw not the size of the canvas but the size of the symbolism, who would see meaning in the stark, spare imagery beyond an attractive combination of brush strokes.
It’s the winter buffalo, making their journey home.
~ Aji
