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“Many years ago, I camped overnight about a hundred feet from this spot,” says Howard Terpning®. “As I recall, it is in an area of the Ruby Mountains in Montana, which was part of the vast region that was home to the Blackfoot people.
“Natosi (sun) was the dominant power in their lives and they believed that Sun gave life-giving energy to all things. I imagined that early one morning as Sun’s rays swept across the land, this old man dismounted from his pony. He held up his sacred eaglewing fan and his pipe and prayed to Sun as his two warrior grandsons looked on with deep respect for their grandfather and the traditions he embodied.
“The story in a painting like this is in the faces of the figures. I wanted to capture a reverence in the faces of these young men for their grandfather and the only way to achieve this is to make a large enough canvas so your figures can be large. With a large format you can introduce more drama, you can enter more into the play of light and shadow on the figures and you can achieve a more dramatic effect than you would on a smaller canvas.”
Terpning’s passion for the story of the Native American, combined with his formidable talent as a painter, makes each of his Fine Art Limited Editions a unique and commanding treasure for your home or office.
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Quite simply, Howard Terpning is one of the most lauded painters of Western
art. His awards are so numerous and he is honored with them so often, that to
list them would require changing the count every few months. To name three
would be to cite the highest prizes awarded to Western art: countless awards
from the Cowboy Artists of America, the Hubbard Art Award for Excellence, the
National Academy of Western Art’s Prix de West and the Lifetime Achievement
Award from the Autry National Center.
Why such praise? Passion, compassion, devotion and respect for his subject
matter, extraordinary talent in palette and brushstroke, an exceptional
ability to evoke emotion both in his paintings and from those viewing them —
all this and more has made Terpning the "Storyteller of the Native American."
Born in Illinois and educated at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the
American Academy of Art, he first gained attention with his captivating
advertising and story illustrations. Film fans praised his movie posters for
such classics as The Sound of Music, Dr. Zhivago and the re-issue of Gone with
the Wind. But his love of the West and Native American traditions saw his
transition to fine art.
Terpning is an Emeritus member of the Cowboy Artists of America, active for 22
years, during which time he was presented with a total of 41 awards. His book,
The Art of Howard Terpning won the Wrangler "Outstanding Art Book" award from
the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
Terpning was recently honored with a one-man show at the Eiteljorg Museum of
American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana featuring 30 of the
artist’s most distinguished works where he was presented with the Lifetime
Achievement Award. This career milestone was further celebrated with the
publication of Spirit of the Plains People (2001, Greenwich Workshop Press).
Terpning is the recipient of the Autry National Center, 2005 Masters of the
American West Thomas Moran Memorial Award, given in recognition of exceptional
artistic merit for painting.
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