woodcuts

Moon of Scarlet Plums Woodcut

Dawn Senior, of Moonhorse Art Studio, has worked in a wide variety of media including charcoal, oil paintings, woodcuts, gouaches, claybords and scratchboards. Her artwork, especially her woodcuts, are a greatly influenced by Native American art. She lived among the Navaho and Hopi on the Arizona deserts for five years as a teenager, and has also spent time on the Rosebud and Wind River Reservations with the Lakota, and Arapaho tribes. Native American legends and Native American myth are a great inspiration on her artwork, especially her woodcuts.

Moon of Red Chokecherries Woodcut - Dawn's Native American-inspired woodcut illustrates the impact of Native American legend and Native American myth on her artwork.

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Price:
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Limited Edition of 100
Print available: On 13 x 19 watercolor paper (maximum image size 12 x 18). Price is $25 and shipping $5.

More information about this Native American-inspired woodcut below.

Have you ever tasted those little wild plums that grow here and there along the Rockies and Black Hills? So sweet and tart, you'll never forget them.

In this woodcut (named roughly for September), Dawn wanted to suggest the rich colors of Hopi pottery, so she layered the printing. As a youngster, Dawn used to go out with her Hopi friends to a little overhang at the edge of the mesa. There they dug up clay and took it back to the village, where people made their wonderful bowls and pots, painted them with colors made of desert plants, ashes, and soil, then fired them in round adobe ovens at the edge of the village. Though the designs in her woodcuts are strictly her own, she has tried to suggest the colors and line quality of the Hopi work.

To the Lakota, the horse is a symbol of the west, and the thunderbeings come from the west. She combined the two ideas into a rainhorse, which flows from the clouds and lightening to form a pool where the moose lives.

The designs the Hopis paint on their pottery appear at first to be geometric patterns without representational reference. But when you study them more closely, you realize that it's really two birds, or a corn plant. If you look well at her print, you'll find a fox and a raccoon.

If you would like more information on our artwork or would like to place an order, email Moonhorse Art Studio or call us 307.327.5381. We look forward to hearing from you!