Statement:

Gallery:

In my native Hoopa language, kiwhliw means “He who paints.” First and foremost, I am a painter. I create complex, richly colorful compositions. I am also Native American, raised on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Northern California.
 
I grew up weaving together the textbook stories told about native people with the stories I could see in my Hoopa Valley landscape and told to me by my elders. I was drawn also to another set of stories that seemingly had no connection to my own – the stories told in the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock. As I began painting too, I moved between these two worlds, as Indian people throughout America do. I make “Indian art,” and I make art.

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