![\"\"](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/21_PatrickDeanHubbell_HorsesRoamingThroughtheNight_oiloncanvas_24x48in.jpg\")
<\/a>“Horses Roaming Through the Night,” oil on canvas, 24″ x 48″<\/p><\/div>\n
What if you loved England or Japan, and you could no longer live there, it isn\u2019t\/wasn\u2019t possible: you are marooned in America, land of tea dumped into a Boston harbor by men dressed like Indian braves<\/em>. You might paint multiple crash-courses of teacups, sunlight spilling over them, symbolic of repeated cups of tea happening there \u2014 without you.<\/h4>\nWhat if you were once a third-generation European acrobat, who performed in American circuses feats of terrific skill and bravery; then, after you have married an American, the circuses one by one close, and you become old. What would you paint, living near your rushing, droning freeway in Florida? Perhaps it would be the swinging rope-rung of the trapeze, twisting, turning, in somehow not-tangled masses, moving en masse<\/em> with not a soul hanging from them.<\/h4>\nIf you were a Navajo today you might, from your checkerboard squares of land (much of the land inhabited by the Navajo is actually, over and over, checkerboarded: mixed with alternate squares of land not owned by Indians, to prevent the Navajo from the consolidated beauty and power of a cape-like great sweep of land) \u2014 you might now be painting, as Patrick Dean Hubbell, Navajo, is \u2014 squares filled with a galloping crush of romping, dreaming horses.<\/h4>\nAt Modern West gallery, in Equus,<\/em> almost all paintings are horses (there is one of heavy-headed romping buffalo, looking weighted down by their large heads, suggestive, perhaps, of American Indian headdresses, dipping humbly, low). In \u201cEquine Energy Wave\u201d and \u201cRunning in the Starry Night Sky\u201d and many others in this show, horses run in one direction, in romping surge. In most of these surges of horses \u2014 look and you find only one horse really fully drawn \u2013 others a jagged Bayeux tapestry of suggestion, as if drawn by a courtroom illustrator who must sketch fast.<\/h4>\n\n\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\t
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<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\tRunning in the Starry Night Sky\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\t
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<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\tHorses in the Wind\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\t
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<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\tEquus Movement\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nIn \u201cHorses in the Wind\u201d and \u201cHorses Roaming Through the Night\u201d horses weave toward each other and away. Again, all horses are riderless. Simplistic shape of horses\u2019 heads, in two paintings, with their jutting sharp points of horse-ears, suggest a spiked, gorgeous crown top to the painting, not unlike Jesus\u2019 naturalistic crown of thorns. (In \u201cEquus Movement\u201d five rising horses\u2019 ears providing points, a balanced royal diadem, like pronged irregular beauty of the chandelier made from tips of deer\u2019s or elk\u2019s antlers.)<\/h4>\nStrikingly, as in a clearing in the forest which light pours through, in the soft rosy browns of \u201cEquestrian Cloud Movement\u201d you notice a spot at the top where you would expect a horse would be: his missingness is a glowing gap.<\/h4>\nHubbell\u2019s horse-legs are triangles coming to scissor point, suggesting surefootedness through their dreamscapes of romp, or — nightmarishly, placement like the point of a compass: reminder these horses might not be free-roam, someone else might own the compass and the board, and these dreamy horses are only longing to rule the range, but are hobbled.<\/h4>\nThe gentleness of Hubbell\u2019s colors says think no such thing;<\/em> but then, consider, how the very shape of a canvas, square or rectangular, is the shape of pens \u2014 where wild horses might be kept, corralled.<\/h4>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/14_PatrickDeanHubbell_EquestrianCloudMovement_oiloncanvas_36x36in-350x349.jpg\")
<\/a>“Equestrian Cloud Movement,” oil on canvas, 36″ x 36″<\/p><\/div>\n
We can guess these horses do not represent a ghost dance of the spirits of dead Indians \u2014 who ghost-dancers believed were revived by the messianic dancing-in-a-circle \u201cghost dance\u201d which rippled across the country, then mostly ended with the Battle of Wounded Knee when many ghost-dancers, men, women, and children, were killed. The Navajo rejected the \u201cghost dance,\u201d not believing, as ghost dancers did, that their special shirts could protect them, even, from bullets.<\/h4>\nThe Navajo called the ghost dance \u201cworthless words.\u201d<\/h4>\nHubbell, the artist, is the Old West and the modern West, born in Navajo, on the New Mexico, Arizona border of the Navajo Nation, Hubbell attended Arizona State University, earning a BFA in painting and drawing and minoring in American Indian studies; he lives now on Navajo Nation land in Window Rock, Arizona.<\/h4>\nThe word Navajo means \u201clarge area of cultivated land.\u201d True to that, Hubbell ranches, has livestock, including horses he often rides. He paints almost every day, says his artist statement, sometimes riding before painting, to set art-mind in motion. His last name Hubbell, like the fat paradox of the wild mustang (their graceful, natural movement versus their capture in the American West) expresses the paradox of his life: Hubbell Trading Post in Arizona is a national historic site, selling Indian artwork for generations, over time a sort of Hubble Horsehead nebula of Indian art.<\/h4>\nMy themes are \u201crooted in the correlation and the conflict of both my Native American and Contemporary mindset,\u201d Hubbell writes in his artist statement.<\/h4>\nSome call the museums of modern American Indian art in Santa Fe and Manhattan \u201cthe Valhallas\u201d of American art, say Indian art is the only art with a real and important and transcendent dialogue with America. And, unsurprisingly, that Indian art is the only<\/em> art in the United States which ever deserves great.<\/em><\/h4>\nYet Valhalla,<\/em> the Vikings\u2019 promise of wonderful place you would go to and live forever if you heroically lost your life in battle, the Navajo would probably understandably believe was only bribe; the Navajo do not, historically, believe in an afterlife.<\/h4>\nCould this, then, be the reason for the greatness of Indian art? That the afterlife is there, in the artwork: this is how the Indian lives on; this is what is sacred?<\/h4>\n
If you were a Navajo today you might, from your checkerboard squares of land (much of the land inhabited by the Navajo is actually, over and over, checkerboarded: mixed with alternate squares of land not owned by Indians, to prevent the Navajo from the consolidated beauty and power of a cape-like great sweep of land) \u2014 you might now be painting, as Patrick Dean Hubbell, Navajo, is \u2014 squares filled with a galloping crush of romping, dreaming horses.<\/h4>\nAt Modern West gallery, in Equus,<\/em> almost all paintings are horses (there is one of heavy-headed romping buffalo, looking weighted down by their large heads, suggestive, perhaps, of American Indian headdresses, dipping humbly, low). In \u201cEquine Energy Wave\u201d and \u201cRunning in the Starry Night Sky\u201d and many others in this show, horses run in one direction, in romping surge. In most of these surges of horses \u2014 look and you find only one horse really fully drawn \u2013 others a jagged Bayeux tapestry of suggestion, as if drawn by a courtroom illustrator who must sketch fast.<\/h4>\n\n\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\tRunning in the Starry Night Sky\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\tHorses in the Wind\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t\t- \n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\tEquus Movement\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nIn \u201cHorses in the Wind\u201d and \u201cHorses Roaming Through the Night\u201d horses weave toward each other and away. Again, all horses are riderless. Simplistic shape of horses\u2019 heads, in two paintings, with their jutting sharp points of horse-ears, suggest a spiked, gorgeous crown top to the painting, not unlike Jesus\u2019 naturalistic crown of thorns. (In \u201cEquus Movement\u201d five rising horses\u2019 ears providing points, a balanced royal diadem, like pronged irregular beauty of the chandelier made from tips of deer\u2019s or elk\u2019s antlers.)<\/h4>\nStrikingly, as in a clearing in the forest which light pours through, in the soft rosy browns of \u201cEquestrian Cloud Movement\u201d you notice a spot at the top where you would expect a horse would be: his missingness is a glowing gap.<\/h4>\nHubbell\u2019s horse-legs are triangles coming to scissor point, suggesting surefootedness through their dreamscapes of romp, or — nightmarishly, placement like the point of a compass: reminder these horses might not be free-roam, someone else might own the compass and the board, and these dreamy horses are only longing to rule the range, but are hobbled.<\/h4>\nThe gentleness of Hubbell\u2019s colors says think no such thing;<\/em> but then, consider, how the very shape of a canvas, square or rectangular, is the shape of pens \u2014 where wild horses might be kept, corralled.<\/h4>\n<\/a>“Equestrian Cloud Movement,” oil on canvas, 36″ x 36″<\/p><\/div>\n
We can guess these horses do not represent a ghost dance of the spirits of dead Indians \u2014 who ghost-dancers believed were revived by the messianic dancing-in-a-circle \u201cghost dance\u201d which rippled across the country, then mostly ended with the Battle of Wounded Knee when many ghost-dancers, men, women, and children, were killed. The Navajo rejected the \u201cghost dance,\u201d not believing, as ghost dancers did, that their special shirts could protect them, even, from bullets.<\/h4>\nThe Navajo called the ghost dance \u201cworthless words.\u201d<\/h4>\nHubbell, the artist, is the Old West and the modern West, born in Navajo, on the New Mexico, Arizona border of the Navajo Nation, Hubbell attended Arizona State University, earning a BFA in painting and drawing and minoring in American Indian studies; he lives now on Navajo Nation land in Window Rock, Arizona.<\/h4>\nThe word Navajo means \u201clarge area of cultivated land.\u201d True to that, Hubbell ranches, has livestock, including horses he often rides. He paints almost every day, says his artist statement, sometimes riding before painting, to set art-mind in motion. His last name Hubbell, like the fat paradox of the wild mustang (their graceful, natural movement versus their capture in the American West) expresses the paradox of his life: Hubbell Trading Post in Arizona is a national historic site, selling Indian artwork for generations, over time a sort of Hubble Horsehead nebula of Indian art.<\/h4>\nMy themes are \u201crooted in the correlation and the conflict of both my Native American and Contemporary mindset,\u201d Hubbell writes in his artist statement.<\/h4>\nSome call the museums of modern American Indian art in Santa Fe and Manhattan \u201cthe Valhallas\u201d of American art, say Indian art is the only art with a real and important and transcendent dialogue with America. And, unsurprisingly, that Indian art is the only<\/em> art in the United States which ever deserves great.<\/em><\/h4>\nYet Valhalla,<\/em> the Vikings\u2019 promise of wonderful place you would go to and live forever if you heroically lost your life in battle, the Navajo would probably understandably believe was only bribe; the Navajo do not, historically, believe in an afterlife.<\/h4>\nCould this, then, be the reason for the greatness of Indian art? That the afterlife is there, in the artwork: this is how the Indian lives on; this is what is sacred?<\/h4>\n
- \n\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\tRunning in the Starry Night Sky\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
- \n\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\tHorses in the Wind\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
- \n\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t
- \n\t\t\t\tEquus Movement\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nIn \u201cHorses in the Wind\u201d and \u201cHorses Roaming Through the Night\u201d horses weave toward each other and away. Again, all horses are riderless. Simplistic shape of horses\u2019 heads, in two paintings, with their jutting sharp points of horse-ears, suggest a spiked, gorgeous crown top to the painting, not unlike Jesus\u2019 naturalistic crown of thorns. (In \u201cEquus Movement\u201d five rising horses\u2019 ears providing points, a balanced royal diadem, like pronged irregular beauty of the chandelier made from tips of deer\u2019s or elk\u2019s antlers.)<\/h4>\n
Strikingly, as in a clearing in the forest which light pours through, in the soft rosy browns of \u201cEquestrian Cloud Movement\u201d you notice a spot at the top where you would expect a horse would be: his missingness is a glowing gap.<\/h4>\n
Hubbell\u2019s horse-legs are triangles coming to scissor point, suggesting surefootedness through their dreamscapes of romp, or — nightmarishly, placement like the point of a compass: reminder these horses might not be free-roam, someone else might own the compass and the board, and these dreamy horses are only longing to rule the range, but are hobbled.<\/h4>\n
The gentleness of Hubbell\u2019s colors says think no such thing;<\/em> but then, consider, how the very shape of a canvas, square or rectangular, is the shape of pens \u2014 where wild horses might be kept, corralled.<\/h4>\n
<\/a>“Equestrian Cloud Movement,” oil on canvas, 36″ x 36″<\/p><\/div>\n
We can guess these horses do not represent a ghost dance of the spirits of dead Indians \u2014 who ghost-dancers believed were revived by the messianic dancing-in-a-circle \u201cghost dance\u201d which rippled across the country, then mostly ended with the Battle of Wounded Knee when many ghost-dancers, men, women, and children, were killed. The Navajo rejected the \u201cghost dance,\u201d not believing, as ghost dancers did, that their special shirts could protect them, even, from bullets.<\/h4>\n
The Navajo called the ghost dance \u201cworthless words.\u201d<\/h4>\n
Hubbell, the artist, is the Old West and the modern West, born in Navajo, on the New Mexico, Arizona border of the Navajo Nation, Hubbell attended Arizona State University, earning a BFA in painting and drawing and minoring in American Indian studies; he lives now on Navajo Nation land in Window Rock, Arizona.<\/h4>\n
The word Navajo means \u201clarge area of cultivated land.\u201d True to that, Hubbell ranches, has livestock, including horses he often rides. He paints almost every day, says his artist statement, sometimes riding before painting, to set art-mind in motion. His last name Hubbell, like the fat paradox of the wild mustang (their graceful, natural movement versus their capture in the American West) expresses the paradox of his life: Hubbell Trading Post in Arizona is a national historic site, selling Indian artwork for generations, over time a sort of Hubble Horsehead nebula of Indian art.<\/h4>\n
My themes are \u201crooted in the correlation and the conflict of both my Native American and Contemporary mindset,\u201d Hubbell writes in his artist statement.<\/h4>\n
Some call the museums of modern American Indian art in Santa Fe and Manhattan \u201cthe Valhallas\u201d of American art, say Indian art is the only art with a real and important and transcendent dialogue with America. And, unsurprisingly, that Indian art is the only<\/em> art in the United States which ever deserves great.<\/em><\/h4>\n
Yet Valhalla,<\/em> the Vikings\u2019 promise of wonderful place you would go to and live forever if you heroically lost your life in battle, the Navajo would probably understandably believe was only bribe; the Navajo do not, historically, believe in an afterlife.<\/h4>\n
Could this, then, be the reason for the greatness of Indian art? That the afterlife is there, in the artwork: this is how the Indian lives on; this is what is sacred?<\/h4>\n
- \n\t\t\t\tEquus Movement\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
- \n\t\t\t\tHorses in the Wind\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
- \n\t\t\t\tRunning in the Starry Night Sky\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>