Saturday, November 06, 2010
Artist Linda Fox & Native American Fellowship @ Winnsboro Center for the Arts
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Artist Linda Fox Continues Tradition of capturing images of Native Americans
Linda Fox, herself of Cherokee ancestry, has become a kind of one-woman crusade to honor leading Native Americans via images on the canvas of her striking oil paintings.
She has become the go-to artist when a Native American tribe decides to commission historic paintings of their past and present leaders.
Perhaps not since the days of Edward Curtis, arguably the most famous and successful pictorialist photographer of early American Indians, has anyone emerged with such passion and talent for preserving the images of various tribal leaders.
At her recent showing of 13 original framed oil paintings at Winnsboro Center for the Arts (WCA), artist Fox initiated the Native American Heritage month of November with a delightful history of her career as an artist, laced with engaging stories of individual commissions for the 13 paintings on exhibit there through Nov. 26.
Among the most famous of her subjects is Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce leader who staged one of the most brilliant military retreats in history, eventually ending with his tragic declaration: My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever. Artist Fox said that Chief Joseph died of a broken heart and it was that characteristic she sought to portray in her stunning portrait.
The close-up portrait in the picture selection above on this post, however, is of another great Native American leader, Captain Jack, and is not Chief Joseph. To see that, consider a visit to the Arts Center during Native American Heritage month.
The exhibit is free to the public at the Arts Center, located at the corner of Market St. and Highway 11 in beautiful downtown Winnsboro.
Linda Fox is a member of Native American Fellowship (NAF), which meets each third Thursday evening at 6 pm in the spacious family life center of Tinney Chapel (449 County Road 4620), just off FM 312 and two miles south of Brookshires in Winnsboro.
NAF, which assisted WCA in sponsoring this event, is grateful to the Arts Center, and especially past-president Helen Burlingham, shown in the photos above, who arranged for a reception following artist Fox's presentation on Saturday, Nov. 6.
