A Ray Swanson Portfolio

Ray Swanson's Navajo Children

In northeastern Arizona, this newest member of the Cowboy Artists of America has found his favorite subjects...

Artist Ray Swanson is not inarticulate. He knows exactly what he is doing and why. But ask him what catches his eye when he roams Arizona's Indian reservations, and you can almost hear a door close. His reply will be brief, probably as brief as his comments here.

For 18 years, Swanson has been recording the cultures of contemporary people of the land who struggle to live with almost biblical simplicity-the Navajo and Hopi Indians.

His recording has been from the inside out-and that makes all the difference. For what one sees at first glance in a Swanson painting is never all there is.

Philosophically, however, Swanson stands with other fine artists who prefer not to spoil our pleasure by telling us what we "ought" to see.

With a bit of probing, this big, quiet, perceptive man will admit that as his art has matured, he travels with increased painterly purpose. "I look for color and light, for what will make a good painting."

And despite the major cultural changes taking place on the reservations, he says he still puts "a lot of emphasis on accuracy. I take a minimum of license. You can still see older women at work in traditional dress, but children's dress-up clothes are now mostly reserved for ceremonial times. So when I find a boy stretched on a rock with time to dream his dreams while he's supposed to be tending sheep, I will put a bright velvet shirt on him if the

(LEFT) "Next to Sing," oil, 30 by 24 inches. "Backstage at the Gallup ceremonials, I came across this little girl who knows she is next to be called, knows she has to go on, but suddenly she is not at all sure this program is for her."

(BELOW) "New Navajo Sheep Dogs," oil, 20 by 36 inches. "I painted this scene to convey the innocence of a very young child with very young animals, their involvement with each other, and their total disregard for anyone else who may be around."

painting needs it." Sketches, photographs, color notes are made in the field and taken home. His paintings grow in his studio and, as he says, "they don't leave until they're right." What he means by "right" is an invita-tion to look deeper than the immediate appeal that is characteristic of every Swanson work, whether it is a story painting of a Navajo child or a portrait of a respected Navajo elder or a Hopi farmer or craftsman whom he admires.

In this sampling of paintings of Navajo children, you will make your own discoveries. I learned something about values: those of Ray Swanson and of people who have dominated his heart, mind, and hands for almost two decades. What I found was summed up best by Marcel Proust years ago: "The great quallity of true art is that it rediscovers, grasps, and reveals to us that reality far from which we live, from which we get farther and farther away as the conventional knowledge we substitute for it becomes thicker and more impermeable...." When the Phoenix Art Museum opens the Cowboy Artists of America show to public viewing on Saturday, October 31, it will mark the 22nd annual exhibition of all-new works by this renowned group of artists. The 1987 show will include six paintings by a new CAA member: Ray Swanson.

"Riding in Dinnebito Wash," oil, 20 by 30 inches. "I wanted to paint this because of the everydayness of it: the beauty of the kids on their horses in their environment, against their own landscape."