Hatching the Desert: Native American Landscapes at the Heard Museum

I created these two new paintings for the 67th Annual Indian Fair & Market at the Heard Museum to honor the enduring dialogue between land, memory, and cultural identity. When I stand in the desert where I was raised, I don’t see an empty space; I feel a living environment carrying countless stories—some whispered through rust-colored canyons, others in the electric hush of dusk.

From the start, I wanted each gesture to reflect how I perceive the landscape as both personal and collective. In my practice, I adopt a hatch-line technique, building layers of color that vibrate against each other. This method comes from a desire to pay homage to traditional Native American designs—like basketry or beadwork—while also embracing a contemporary, almost impressionistic approach to color and form.

For me, these diagonal marks evoke both the grain of sand underfoot and the ephemeral nature of memory. The desert isn’t a static backdrop, but a force that shapes identity. By weaving ochres, reds, and blues into each composition, I aim to capture the tension between the land’s earthy stillness and its bursts of brilliance, where the sky can shift to turquoise in an instant, and where the cracks of dry earth glow in the sunlight.

Native American Contemporary Painting often engages the land as a living presence, rather than a distant subject. I see my work as part of this larger conversation. Historically, landscape painting in America could romanticize or overlook Indigenous connections to place. Through my layering of color and lively brushwork, I strive to restore a sense of agency to the desert. It’s a creative collaborator, shaping every stroke I make.

Showing these pieces at the Heard Museum’s Indian Fair & Market is especially meaningful, because it highlights how Native artists continually reshape and redefine tradition. Rather than fixing the desert in any one frame, I want viewers to sense the land’s pulse—that subtle motion of wind, light, and communal stories overlapping.

My hope is that these paintings remind people how the desert and its communities are always in flux. We’re shaped by the land, and we, in turn, shape how it’s seen and remembered. Each hatch line might be read as a piece of cultural heritage, a memory, or simply an echo of the desert’s enduring heartbeat. In that way, these works become more than landscapes: they’re windows into how I reconcile past, present, and the endless horizon still waiting to be discovered.

Come visit at the Heard Museum on March 1st & 2nd: https://heard.org/event/fair/

Title: South Mountain 2
Medium: Acrylic and Ink on Canvas
Size: 24" x 36"
Year: 2025

Title: South Mountain 1
Medium: Acrylic and Ink on Canvas
Size: 24" x 36"
Year: 2025