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Turquoise Tortoise Gallery Features Navajo Artist Tony Abeyta
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This month Turquoise Tortoise Gallery in Sedona celebrates widely successful Navajo artist Tony Abeyta. In 2004, when the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington D.C., it was an Abeyta painting that served as the official illustration of the new museum's opening. The mixed-media work on wood panels is now part of the museum’s permanent collection. This commission alone was a prestigious accomplishment for an artist but it was not Abeyta’s first: He had been commissioned six years earlier to create the signature image of the groundbreaking. W. Richard West, the museum’s director, has written of Abeyta’s work: “His art is never static or complacent and is, instead, fearless, always changing, always moving; constantly pushing to new places of artistic creativity and resolution.” The Turquoise Tortoise Gallery’s owner, Peggy Lanning, remembers the first time Tony Abeyta walked into her gallery over twenty years ago. “He was seventeen years old and . . . he laid all his work out right on the floor for me to take a look at. I’ve been representing him ever since.” Abeyta, who grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, began his artistic studies at Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts; he went on to receive a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has also studied in France, Italy and the Chicago Institute of Art. His work combines vision and intuition with the colors and textures of his homeland; though Abeyta’s pieces draw on his Navajo (Diné) heritage, they have a universal feel. The artist uses a combination of acrylic and oil paints, gold leafing, encaustic wax and collage elements to translate his ideas onto canvas; sand is used to build his paint into richly textured layers. “I want my work to reinforce the ideology of Indian religion, its strength, its beauty and semblance,” Abeyta says. “I work to create an interpretation of deities translated through myself and given an identity devoid of their actual documented existence. . . . This system of ritual belief is the most important basis in Indian culture and ensures its infinite existence.” Today Abeyta’s paintings hang in museums and private collections throughout the world. For further information, contact Turquoise Tortoise Gallery, located in Hozho Center in the heart of “Gallery Row,” 431 Highway 179, Sedona. 928-282-2262 or www.turqtortsedona.com. Open daily: 10-6 Mon-Sat, 11-5 Sun. |
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Where: Turquoise Tortoise Gallery, Hozho Center, 431 Highway 179, Sedona Phone: 928-282-2262 Contact: www.turqtortsedona.com Don't keep it to yourself. Tell everyone you know! Subscribe now! Get Sedona news and events delivered right to your email. (Your privacy is protected. No spam ever, and you can unsubscribe at any time.) |
