Spirit of Nat love
(collection)

Mixed material, acrylic on panel
All 24 x36 “
2022
Price available on request

Nat Love was a former slave and was one of the most well known black cowboys. Cowboys were essentially black outdoorsmen. Love was a cowboy, rodeo performer, “Pullman Porter”, and author. After 30 years of Cowboying, he became a Pullman Porter for some time, a well paying job accessible to a black man in his day, working the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. This installation tells the story of what the killed the large cattle drives; “rail” and “barbed wire”. It also images Nat Love reminiscing from a train window the open country he explored on horseback. In this arrangement, the install faces the other wall of 24 x 36’s showing the American Southwest.

The abstract “space pattern” is a staple of my work over the last decade. The works components are very much rooted in specific symmetry, vectors, patterns, ideas, and colors specific to the American Southwest. The project extrapolates elements of modern African American culture, and the pattern set. This collection adds Concept bridges both realistic and abstract patterns,  curvaceous shapes in concert with vectored shapes that can mirror the softness of hardness of nature.

The goal was to create artwork that can bridge these feelings while literally displaying “nature as art’, and ‘art as nature’.