Portrait of a Native American elder. Based on a photograph from 1910.

Currently, I am drawing those images from my personal archive for which I've always felt a special fascination, but that were incompatible with the photomontages I have made so far.

This drawing is the first of a series.

My portraits of American 'Indians' are for me like icons, place holders if you will. I feel it is relevant for me to draw (re-document) them, because of the perilous existence of many indigenous peoples in present time. Other ways of living and experiencing the world, languages and customs and traditional knowledge, under siege by encroaching alien mindsets and business interests. The big boot of 'civilisation' comes to either stamp them out of existence altogether, assimilate them by erasing their culture and killing their shared core identity, or else forcefully relocate them in order to protect an endangered animal they have coexisted with for thousands of years.
 
Charcoal Drawing on tinted Hahnemühle Ingres paper.
48 x 63 cm (19”x25”) paper size
This original drawing comes in a black box frame around the entire sheet of paper (without glass).
It is ready to hang on your wall, straight out of the box.