Oral History Interview with Brent Greenwood

Oral History Interview

with

Brent Greenwood

Interview Conducted by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder November 13, 2014

Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project

Interview History

Interviewer: Julie Pearson-Little Thunder Transcriber: Madison Warlick Editors: Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, Micki White

The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Project Detail

The purpose of the Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project is to document the development of the state by recording its cultural and intellectual history.

This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on April 15, 2009.

Legal Status

Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Brent Greenwood is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on November 13, 2014.

Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project

About Brent Greenwood…

Brent Greenwood (Ponca-Chickasaw) was raised in Oklahoma City in an ethnically diverse, urban environment. As a middle-school student, his painting entry for an Indian art show was turned down because it was assumed to be a tracing of a Rance Hood painting. A dancer and powwow singer, Greenwood was influenced by Hood and Jerome Tiger initially, but at the Institute of American Indian Arts, he came to realize the full scope of Native art. Upon completing his BFA at Oklahoma City University, he developed a style that emphasizes the shapes of human faces and forms over a subject’s individual features. The artist has won a number of awards, including First Place in printmaking at Santa Fe Indian Market, and has received several mural and painting commissions. In 2008 he and his wife, Kennetha, were honored with the title of Parents of the Year by the Oklahoma Indian Education Association, and in 2009 were recognized as Parents of the Year by the National Indian Education Association.

In his interview, besides discussing his creative subject matter, process, and techniques, Greenwood points to public art as his doorway into Native art. He recalls being rejected from the Red Earth Indian Arts Festival initially because of his unusual style, only to be picked up Kiva Gallery in Santa Fe. He also talks about two murals he did: one for the Ponca tribal affairs building, and one painted with Chickasaw youth at the National Wildlife Refuge at Tishomingo.

Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project

Brent Greenwood

Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder November 13, 2014 Edmond, Oklahoma

Little Thunder This is Julie Pearson Little-Thunder. Today is November 13, 2014, and I’m interviewing Brent Greenwood for the Oklahoma Native Artists Project sponsored by Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at OSU. We’re at Brent’s studio in Edmond. Brent, you’re Chickasaw and Ponca. You attended the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe and got your BFA [bachelor of fine arts] from Oklahoma City University. Your works range from expressionistic to more abstract, and you sometimes incorporate real objects for a three-dimensional effect. You’ve really gained a lot of momentum over the last several years, and tomorrow night you’ll be showing at the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in the Small Wonders show. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Greenwood Thank you.

Little Thunder Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Greenwood I was born in Midwest City, Oklahoma. Grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and in particular the south side of Oklahoma City. Born and raised in a metro area, but I’ve always had the connections and family up at Ponca City, more so than I did initially from my relatives in the southeastern part of the state, but I’ve always had that knowing of where I come from and who I was as a Chickasaw, urban Chickasaw- Ponca Indian.

Little Thunder Can you talk a bit about your folks, what they did for a living?

Greenwood Sure. My father, I think in the beginning when I think back of what he did, I think he worked a couple jobs when I was younger. Then he started working at the US Postal Service. I know he used to work for a local pizza place called Crystal’s Pizza, which we loved. I think he may have worked that and the post office at the time, because thinking back

when I started the post office, it was part-time and we had to supplement our part-time with another job, so he was working two jobs. My mom was working at Southwestern Bell as a receptionist. That’s what she did. My dad, I think at the post office he was more into the clerical side of it, mail handler. He wasn’t a mailman, but he was a mail handler.

Like I said, it was kind of cool that he worked two jobs, one at the post office, but one at the pizza place because whenever they had mess-ups on pizzas, “Dad’s home, yay!” (Laughter) We was always looking forward to those nights when Dad was working late because he was coming home with pizza, and we were just like, “Ah!” I also look back on those years, and those are probably some of my most obese years, I guess you could say. (Laughs) I was really kind of a little chunky guy, and I think it was all those extra pizzas Dad used to bring home. Anyway, that’s what my parents did. Dad worked two jobs, and my mom was working at Southwestern Bell.

Little Thunder How about brothers or sisters, siblings?

Greenwood Yeah, I have two sisters. I’m the oldest, and my sisters were all…stair- stepped. We’re all two years apart. It’s funny how I was envious of them. This is probably the way that it goes with older siblings, is that you’re more, I think, restricted on things, but the younger ones always get to do things sooner than you did. It happened that way with my sisters, and I was envious. I was kind of mad in a way, whatever. I have two sisters.

Little Thunder How about your exposure to art in the home growing up?

Greenwood Art was always something that, I think, my parents recognized as me having a ability to do and express myself. I got my first art award from illustrating a book. Back then, when you’re young and looking at other people’s style, all you’re doing is mimicking their style. That’s what I was doing. I could look at a picture and draw it detail for detail, so I got my first art award when I was like in the fourth grade. I think it was before then my parents were always saving my artwork, and they were buying me art books. As I got older and realized that we are Indian, we are Native American, then I started being more influenced by early, not to say early Indian art but Indian art in general.

You’ll probably get to this question, but I’ll just tell you now. Some of my early influences were the Oklahoma artists that I knew, that I was aware of. That was Rance Hood and Jerome Tiger. There was art that I really did like growing up, but I didn’t always know the names, so as I started becoming more aware of the art, I realized the other art that I

was influenced by but at that young age didn’t realize the artists themselves. There was Woody Crumbos, there were Acee Blue Eagles, there were the Kiowa Five, Robert Redbird, these other Oklahoma artists that had influenced my work at a very young age, which I didn’t even know their names or faces.

The two that I know I could definitely relate to at that young age was Rance Hood and Jerome Tiger. Those are the artists that I really started mimicking their style and doing the flow of it all, the warriors on horseback like Rance does, the stickballers of Jerome Tiger, just the flow of everything, of Jerome Tiger. His natural drawing ability, I was kind of in awe of that. Me being a drawer, I guess you’d say, first before a painter, before any of that I was really inspired by what he did and motivated to pursue or keep doing what I did at that time.

Little Thunder What is your first memory of making art, very first memory?

Greenwood Oh, man, the dirt, (Laughs), in the dirt playing with…. I can remember using sticks and making marks in the dirt with rocks and sticks, making mud, being real hands-on about it, and then just the typical crayon. I remember doing all those things, some, not all of them. I do have a recollection of doing some of the drawings and things like that. Even back then, thinking about it, I really did gravitate towards color. I did like a lot of color, so all my pieces always had crayon color marks and things like that. It goes back to elementary school, as far as I can remember.

Little Thunder And your first exposure to Native art, was it through a book, do you remember or…

Greenwood I think it was, from what I recall, pictures on the wall that I would see in a public place. That’s what’s so cool is that even me at a young age realizing that and picking up on that. That’s why that’s so important to have art in public places, because it’s going to be influential. It’s everyone from—I don’t even know how old I was, but I was a very young person when I noticed the art on the walls and Jerome Tigers and things like that. That’s why I think that’s very vital, art in public places, art in buildings, whatever. That’s where I think I first really started taking notice was art in the public sense.

Little Thunder You’re growing up in this urban area. Were you pretty involved with the urban Indian community in Oklahoma City?

Greenwood I would say somewhat through school I was. Plus, being on the south side, we had other Indian friends. We had a lot of Mexican friends, Mexican Indian friends, so there was a mix, nice mix of ethnic people, I

guess you would say. All the influences I had from my Native friends was all from a urban perspective because I didn’t grow up around our Ponca reservation, like we like to say: our White Eagle area. I went back home for holidays. I went back for celebrations and dances and meetings we had. All my circle of friends were urban Indians, urban people. That was my area of influence. There was only a few of us that were really artists expressing ourselves. I grew up in the ’80s. I was a child of the ’80s, so I was into breakdancing and hip-hop and graffiti. Jumping ahead there, but that was my early influences.

Little Thunder So what were your art experiences like in elementary school? Any memories that stand out?

Greenwood Yeah, it’s funny you bring that up because there was this one class I had. It was a third- and fourth-grade class that was combined. I guess even back then we were lacking in teachers and we had to combine some classes at my elementary school. This is, I think, to this day one of the coolest projects I ever did. Our teacher, she had us do a self-portrait of ourself and put it on our journal. We had weekly themes, and we had to write stories. I still have this book somewhere, but it’s just a spiral notebook with my portrait on there. I remember the shirt I drew. I remember wearing that. I remember that haircut. It’s a crayon self- portrait, and all these stories are funny to read because they’re thematic.

They’re just from the imagination of a child that didn’t have internet, didn’t have all this stuff, didn’t have all this outside influence. It really did show the imaginative side of what a child can do. To me, that’s like one of the greatest projects I ever did was incorporate writing. It incorporated drawing with my portrait. I think I sketched on a few of the pages. It was combining those elements of writing, the analytical side, plus the creative side. To me to this day, I think it that’s one of the coolest projects I ever did. When I think of something, that really formal drawing, that’s one of them because I did my self-portrait. I remember that art award I got which was in, I think, the fourth grade. So those are my earliest recollections of school, art in the school.

Little Thunder How about at the secondary level or junior high level?

Greenwood Yeah, it was more of continuing—in middle school it was more like independent study because it was like…. I don’t even readily recall taking an art class per se in middle school, but I did it all the time. I still was drawing. Even more so in middle school, my drawings start more mimicking Rance Hood and Jerome Tiger, even to the point where my Indian Education director got me into an art show, which was at the Crossroads Mall. I entered, and then they kicked me out of it, so to speak. They pretty much didn’t let my entry get into the show because

they said I traced one of Rance Hood’s paintings. In a way, that was a compliment. I said, “Well, if I’m that technical that they thought I traced….”

My Indian ed director tried to tell me that she tried to take up for me. They said, “No, he traced one of Rance’s paintings. That’s not art.” I said, “Wow, I must be pretty technical in drafting and all that to be able to come across as someone who traced one of his pieces.” All I did was I took his—I think there was one, it was a buffalo hunt, and then I took the same idea, used his style. Even back then, I realized I didn’t want to copy anyone, necessarily. I knew that I had to take what they did but to make it my own, so although it was typical Rance Hood style, the hair and everything, feathers, and the painted horses, it still had something different that that painting I looked at didn’t.

I think I put these buffalos in there. They were, like, a different composition obviously, but there again I had the flying owls or the scissortail coming out. I drew one of those. They can’t tell me that they said, “This is just like this painting,” because it’s not. It’s his style, obviously, and I mimicked his style to a degree that they thought I traced it. That was in middle school, and then high school was more—I had a couple of formal art classes where I did get some painting and get introduced to some different mediums, which that was cool.

Little Thunder Watercolor or acrylics?

Greenwood One of them was on felt, felt board. It was pastel on felt board. It was pretty cool, though. I mean, it was oil pastels. I did a lot of blending, and it was on felt. That was one of the cool projects I did. Even then, like I said, I was using my hands to feel like I wasn’t constricted to just a paintbrush or a pencil. It was helping me to explore a little bit, step outside the box.

Little Thunder Right. So how about after high school? What happened?

Greenwood Didn’t want to go to college. (Laughs). That’s for sure. Didn’t want to go to college. I figured I had enough schooling. I was just wanting to take a break. My parents, (I’m thankful for them) they encouraged me to go and pursue a degree. They said, “We went, but we didn’t finish. You’ll be the first one, if you go and finish, you’ll be the first one in our family.” I’ve heard that before from my generation, “you’ll be the first one to go college and graduate.” I felt like if they’re going to support me enough and encourage me with my art, (I got a partial scholarship at OCU; it’s where I started out) then I might as well try it and see. When I got to college, it kind of opened my eyes up to a whole new world of

possibility. Therefore I tried to do a bunch of different things. I joined a fraternity. (Laughs)

My wife still questions me to this day, “Why the heck did you ever get in that fraternity?” I got in the fraternity. I got into doing different things in school. Art, did my art. Probably did a little bit of partying. That’s maybe what geared my idea towards a fraternity, but that’s another story. That’s not the emphasis, right? The emphasis was on the art. It always has been. My first year there, I was learning all these fundamentals of art, the basics, like I say. The second year, it was like I didn’t feel a challenge. I was trying to ask. I was trying to reach out because my work still to a degree looked like Jerome Tiger or Rance Hood, the typical, what later becomes for me Oklahoma art. It had that same look, but I wanted to do something more than just painting feathers and Indian guys, their hair blowing in the wind and wrapped in a blanket, and silhouette of a moon, you know, silhouettes of landscapes, and elements of moons and suns.

I wanted to do more than that, but I wasn’t able to tap into my potential, I guess, because I didn’t know how to. I knew about the Institute of American Indian Arts. I heard about it my senior year in high school, but I didn’t…. My art teacher at the time gave me the information, but I just couldn’t get my stuff together. Like I said, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t feel like I was ready, and everything happens for a reason. Say I did go to IAIA right out of high school. No telling where I would’ve ended up, I think. The fact that I did go to OCU and I stayed local, I was able to go home and still…because moving out, it’s kind of scary. I had to live on campus, but I always could go home when I wanted to because of my family. They built that foundation for me, of family, of tradition. We are also raised in the Methodist Church. I had that as a religious base, as well as our Native American spirituality of the Native American Church. I always had that strong foundation. Being close to home the first couple of years really did, I think, make a difference because then I was ready for IAIA.

Then it wasn’t such a culture shock. What I noticed when I was out there, some of these students right off the res, eighteen, some seventeen, they couldn’t cut it. It was such a culture shock. Even though you’re around other Indians, being away from home, some for the very first time, they couldn’t deal. There was a lot of drop outs. There was some partying going on to the extreme that they got kicked out, so it was different things. I was like, “I’m kind of glad I took two years before I come out here. I might’ve been one of those students that just came right back home because of partying or just not able to handle it at that age of eighteen.” When I went out there, I was like twenty and got introduced to a whole new world that opened my eyes up to a whole

new world of possibilities, really. Then from there, like I said, that’s when I really got introduced to the artists, some of the artists I’d seen growing up but couldn’t always associate names.

That’s when I really started becoming aware of the movement of Indian art and contemporary Indian art and how it spoke to people, how it moved people, the narratives of it all, the political side of it, the beautiful side of it. All this stuff really overwhelmed me to a point where—I mean, I was glad. I was like a sponge. I was taking it all in and learning the most I could, at the same time having to step outside my box of what was known to me and that Oklahoma style of art, and my teachers helping me see things from a different perspective, turning my paintings around, looking at them upside down, doing monotypes to come up with my painting color palettes and stuff like that. All these different…influx of ideas, really did help mold me into the artist I am today. Lloyd Kiva New, the founder of the school, one of his founding principles was to bring the Indian out in the young people, the Indianness. I can see it totally fulfilled that mission with me, and it’s still doing that today, so that was great. I finished there, and then I came back to OCU, finished up my bachelor’s.

Little Thunder Did you have any outstanding teachers, or do you remember some classmates over there that continued the artist path?

Greenwood Yeah, oh, yeah, there’s a lot of them that I still am friends with today. They’re full-time artists. They’re from the area, so they’ve been full- time artists ever since, going back to the late 1990s, early 2000s because they’re in an area where—Indian Market. They’re in the region where this is such a big thing and people appreciate it. Not saying they don’t appreciate it here, but it’s like there’s more of a awareness and…word I’m looking for. There’s more appreciation for it, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. It’s in the architecture, it’s in everything you see out there. It’s in the foods and the culture, style, whatever. It’s out there. It’s in that area. My friends that are successful today, they were doing this ten, fifteen, years ago because they’re in the area.

I always call it the Mecca for Indian art. That’s what I always used to refer to it as. Luckily, we look back, and we laugh at our IAIA days because we’re like, “Man, we were crazy back then.” Looking at some of our projects like, “Oh, my God, that was terrible. What were we thinking?” But looking at us now, it was all part of that process, learning process, and it was great. I have a good number of friends that are successful in the art world and outside, too, doing things. IAIA really did have an influence in our life. Even the ones that didn’t graduate, that went there part and didn’t finish, it made a lasting impression upon them, and we’re still friends today.

Little Thunder When did you sell your first piece of art?

Greenwood Out of college. Growing up, I don’t think I really ever sold anything. I just gave things away. Some of the girlfriends I had in high school, I was always drawing them pictures. Those might pop up on eBay or something. (Laughs) I was always drawing silly pictures for girlfriends in high school, and I was always giving things away. I set some goals for myself once I graduated college with my bachelor’s. I said, “Okay, within five years I want to be in a gallery.” I started setting these goals because I felt my art was still kind of, it just wasn’t mature enough. I was still experimenting with all this color and design elements, so I set these long-term goals. I graduated in ’96. It’s funny, there’s a Red Earth reference. Okay, in ’96 I graduated. The following year, working on my art part-time, I started the post office part-time, so I was working at the post office part-time. Anyway, I’ve been going to Red Earth as a dancer, as a spectator, and now I’m in this art area, art world. “Okay, this is local. Let’s try it.”

I apply for Red Earth, and I get rejected. I’m like, “Aw, man!” At this time, my studio’s in the garage. I’m trying to make a way for myself. The things I had at the time were still kind of similar to what I paint today, but it was a little more tighter, I think. I can see today the evolution or the progression of my art where there’s more depth in it today as opposed to what it was like in 1997 when I got denied out of Red Earth. I took that with a grain of salt, but at the time, being relatively young, you’re offended a little bit. “What? I can’t believe that. I’ve seen some of the art there, and I didn’t get in?” (Laughs) Just some of the art. There was some of the artists, you wonder, “How the heck did I not get in?” Anyway, my figurative pieces have always been about form, shape, and shading, and not so much the details of the fingers, let’s say, or the eyes, and the mouth.

It’s always been about form and shape. I guess it all happened with figure drawing because in my figure drawing classes at OCU, I was focusing on shapes. I did some little things here and there with the hair and stuff, but it was always about shapes when I transitioned into my paintings. When I started doing more Native subjects, it kind of stayed the same. The faces were non-descriptive, and so the pieces I submitted for Red Earth were those figurative pieces. I told my wife, I said, “Maybe I should start working on faces. Maybe I should start doing that. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get in because they don’t get it.” My wife said, “Don’t change your style just because of what some people think. You do what you want to do, and people will appreciate you eventually for you. Continue to do your thing. Don’t feel like you have to conform to fit anyone’s standards. Just do your thing.”

She really did give me a little pep talk. I said, “Okay, that’s cool. So now what? Well, let’s start thinking about galleries.” I pulled out my Southwest Art magazines, art whatever, Native Peoples. Started pulling out all my Indian magazines and going through galleries. “Looks like a good gallery, looks like a good gallery.” Now, at that same time, I got commissioned for a piece. At this time this bank, (it was a Native American bank) they were doing a promotional card, phone card, to give out to clients. On one of my pieces I have from my graduating exhibit from OCU, we had to have a senior exhibit, so one of my pieces was just feathers. It was done on paper, paint, mixed media. It was kind of a cool piece to put on this phone card.

They gave me a number of these phone cards as a compensation. I said, “Well, shoot, this is like a business card.” My wife, she really did help me. She helped me brainstorm on what to do. She said, “You look at the galleries. You can work on this promotional piece. Just send it out. Say ‘My name’s….’ A little brief summary about your bio, about yourself and tell them…” (I don’t even remember how we worded it) “…‘As a token of appreciation, please accept this ten-minute gift phone card on me. Enjoy the work. Hopefully, we can do business in the future.’” You know, really trying to market. Anyway, I sent out to like thirty-one galleries. They were from California, New Mexico, Colorado, some here in Oklahoma. I think those are about the four states we focused on, maybe one in Utah somewhere, but thirty-one galleries, right?

One calls me back and says, “Well, we really like your work. We saw some images of your work.” I think I sent some photos or whatever, but the card, they said, “We really like your card. We appreciate that phone card, but we’re not taking any new artists at this time.” I said, “Okay, well, I thank you for calling me back.” Another gallery in Santa Fe called me and said, “We’d like to see more of your work. Is there any way you can give us more examples?” It just so happened, (it’s like how things all happen for a reason) it was like a month away from Gathering of Nations Powwow, and we were planning on going. I told them, “Actually, I’ll be in Albuquerque for a powwow in a month. I can stop by the gallery then and bring you some pieces.” They said, “Yeah, go ahead and do that. Make sure you call first,” whatever. The gallery was Kiva Fine Art. I go out there for the Gathering.

I took out three pieces, some from my show. At that time, they’re all mixed media pieces on paper. I think there’s two on paper, one on canvas. At any rate, I took out those three pieces, and they kept two of them. They said, “We really like this style. If you want to work on some more pieces, go ahead and do that, and we’ll see how these move.” I forgot how she worded it, but she said, “We’ll see how these do, and

we’ll stay in touch.” I didn’t know how to price my pieces. I said, “Okay.” It was fifty-fifty. I said, “Well, how about $1,750?” I was like, “That’s kind of high,” but my wife was, “Whatever.” They were okay with it. The piece is only, it was probably the size of this. It was framed, so it was like a 24” by 30”. The other piece was like $1,200, but that $1,750, I was like, “That’s kind of high, but we’ll see.” Two weeks later they call back, “Hey, we need some more of your work. That piece for $1,750? We sold it.”

Little Thunder That’s great.

Greenwood I was like, “Are you serious?! Really?” I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked! That kind of secured my spot with Kiva Gallery, and I’ve been with them since 2010. The only reason I’m not with them anymore is that they lost their lease, basically. After being there for twenty-some years, the landlord was raising their rent and not cutting them any breaks, so they had to… Gallery business is tough in Santa Fe. They had to relocate so they could stay open, keep their doors open. They relocated to another spot, but I never relocated with them. By then, it was hard for me keep things out there and do things here. We still have a good relationship, but, yeah, that kind of secured my spot with Kiva Gallery. I’d been with them for, what, fifteen years or something like that. It was a great relationship, and it was funny how it all fell into place. Even though I didn’t get into Red Earth, I got into Kiva Gallery. I did that for a number of years.

During Indian Market, we had a special showing. I did that for a number of years and didn’t really think about Indian Market necessarily until about 2005. Then I applied for that. In 2005 I applied for SWAIA [Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, Santa Fe Indian Market] and I got rejected. I said, “Oh, no, here we go again!” (Laughs) I got rejected, so I was like, “Oh, man.” I was somewhat seasoned because I’d been in the gallery since ’97, and it was about 2005 when I finally applied. I was dejected a little bit, and I said, “Okay, whatever.” I think that first year I was really trying for the fellowship, too, because I remember applying for that fellowship and I didn’t get it. Anyway, I think I waited another five years before I applied again. I felt like I was working up to it, so I applied again in 2010 and entered…a print. It was a print; it was a woodblock. It was a woodblock I did. I went back and colored it with acrylic and made it look like ledger art. I put that in my printmaking because it was a woodblock, and I got First Place.

I want to say that secured my spot at Indian Market, but I’ve been doing SWAIA Indian Market ever since that. Anyway, long story short, that’s not short, but long story, that’s the beginnings of my exposure and experience in a gallery, and art market world, and where I’m at today.

Still doing the art markets, and I’m really expanding now because I’m doing, like you’ve mentioned, I’m doing that Small Works, Great Wonders show. I’m doing another show, (this’ll be my second year to do this show in Denver) the Coors Western Art Exhibit. It’s a part of the National [Western] Stock and Sale Show, so I’m part of that show, and that’s invitation only.

I don’t really consider myself a Western artist, and it’s all contemporary Western art, but yet obviously we’re a part of that history, our Indian people. You see it, going way back, us and the Plains, and the influence of European clothing, and lifeways on us, and how we adapted and made it our own. In a sense, I guess some of my things I am doing is Western, so they consider it like that. In that Western show in Denver, last year there were only two other artists, and that was Arlo [Namingha] and Dan Namingha. This year we got, of course, Arlo and Dan coming back, and then Melanie Yazzie, who was a former printmaking instructor of mine at IAIA, so it’ll be cool to see her.

Little Thunder What was that show like your first time going…

Greenwood Oh it was, it was like…

Little Thunder …and it’s a big city.

Greenwood I keep calling it the Cowboy Hall of Fame, but the Western Heritage Art Museum. Is that what we call it now?

Little Thunder [National] Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, I think is what it’s called.

Greenwood Okay, Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It was like that but on a smaller scale. The art there, some of the art there was really amazing. It was really different, yet some of the stuff there was like impressionistic, really impressionistic, and some was really abstract. It was horses and cows, but it was just really a nice mix of art. I could see how my stuff would fit in there. It was cool. It was a cool experience to be a part of that.

Little Thunder Did you have some good sales?

Greenwood Yeah, I sold two pieces. I took three pieces and sold two pieces there. Since it was my first year ,one of the volunteers said, “You know, if you sell anything here they’re going to have you back.” (Laughs) I said, “Well, that’s cool,” because I sold two pieces, so that was awesome. Of course, now this year I’m speaking on the panel. They have me speaking on one of their panels, so that’s kind of cool.

Little Thunder Congratulations, that’s great.

Greenwood Thank you.

Little Thunder How about SEASAM [Southeastern Art Show and Market]? Did you do that when they started the Southeastern…

Greenwood I’ve been a part of the Chickasaw Southeastern Arts Market probably since its beginnings. It was a Clayburn Straughn show at first, and then it transitioned shortly thereafter to the Southeastern Art [Show] and Market, SEASAM. That’s what it transitioned to, and then I’ve been with that ever since. I saw it as a way to—when I do my art, it’s either really focusing on Plains or Southeastern, and then sometimes there’s a mix of the two but only into the sense that you see clothing and stuff. “Well, yeah, this guy could’ve been from the Plains, but he also has Southeastern elements.” That’s the only the time because there was this mix of European clothing and culture and style for the Chickasaws, obviously, because we had experience with the Americans way before even my Ponca people did. There was still that adaptation of clothing and elements and things like that.

What I don’t do, I don’t ever mix the two cultures, like Chickasaw, whatever. I keep it pretty much separate when I focus on one or the other. It’s really going to be Southeastern or really Ponca. It’s not really going to be a combination of the two. Like I said, the clothing is the only thing that you can see obvious similarities in both that I’m working on. Plus, my wife is Otoe, so I am encouraged—I’m not going to say encouraged but I do like a lot of elements of Otoe culture, things they’re really known for, floral work, some of the things that they have with their dress and their attire, which is somewhat similar to our Ponca people. I have those influences, as well, so I always incorporate that. When I want to focus on my Ponca or Plains pieces, some of the Otoe elements come out, too.

Little Thunder How did you two meet?

Greenwood It was at OCU.

Little Thunder Oh, it was at OCU?

Greenwood Yeah, it was through a mutual friend.

Little Thunder She wasn’t studying art, too?

Greenwood No, and I could say how the occurrence all happened, how we met, but I don’t want to, since this is going to be out there, I’m not going to say the friend we met through, although it’s kind of a funny story. Anyway, we met through a mutual friend.

Little Thunder But definitely, she’s been a good business partner. That’s sometimes the hardest thing when you’re an artist is dealing with the business part.

Greenwood Yeah, especially in the beginning. She’s been very encouraging to help me in any way she can, as she could, with ideas and things like this. Now even today she maintains my website when she can. She’s a graphic designer now. I think the art’s always been in her background, too, and she just never…. Even when I was meeting her, we were doing small art shows together. She was painting candles and doing small canvasses because she had this little artsy nature about her, too. Then she got hired on to work for her tribe at a local office, simply as a receptionist. Then they started needing other things like business cards and working things on a computer. Started out pretty simple, but then they sent her to school for graphic design and paid for it. Now she’s like their head of—if they had a graphic design department, she’d be the director because she handles everything.

What’s cool about it is she uses that artistic influences from her Otoe side and upbringing, whatever she’s done, and she incorporates that in a graphic design sense and has that sensibility about her when she does her artwork through graphic Photoshop or…. I don’t know what programs she uses, but she’s very skilled at that. She designs my business cards and things I can’t even imagine. When I’m still trying to think about cut and paste, “Here, do it this way,” and she’ll flip stuff. Even when I was in college, taking commercial art classes, it was still pretty much cut and paste. That was in the early ’90s. We didn’t have access to the computer stuff they do now. It makes things so much easier to do things on a computer and make it look really nice and sharp and artsy. Yeah, she uses that to her full benefit, everything she’s learned, and still continues to learn. She’s always had that influence.

Little Thunder I like your website. What were some early reactions when you developed this mature style, and, as you say, you’re focusing on form, you’re not focusing on features? I saw that you mentioned Bert Seabourn as kind of an influence a little bit, but also I thought of Virginia Stroud a little bit and what she does. But what were some early reactions to your work? Do you remember, either the best compliment or maybe the funniest reaction?

Greenwood I’ll get the funniest one out of the way. (Laughter) I think this was at the gallery. When I was doing gallery shows during Indian Market, we

always hung around the gallery to talk about our work, try to sell our work. I didn’t know. I let people look at it and take it in for what they wanted to, however they were engaged. Then if they had any questions, I would sit there and, “Okay, if you have any questions, I’m the artist.” I’d let them kind of digest it first. There were these two ladies in particular. It was one of my figurative pieces, which just had shadows and a face, no face, really. They were looking at it, and they’re this close, (gestures) and they’re kind of…. They’re looking at each other.

I was just getting ready to say, “If you have any questions on the artist…” but as I was getting ready to say that, she leaned over to her friend and said, “Oh, he must can’t paint faces.” (Laughs) And she was like, “Yeah,” and they started to walk on. I was like, “I’m not going to say nothing. I don’t have to. I don’t have to defend myself. If that’s what they got from it….” There was so much things going on in that piece with a message. It was a narrative piece. I think the piece was dealing with the Osage oil murders, so the foreground was an Osage man, and the back was his wife in the car waiting on him. She was looking out the window like, “Come on, what are you doing?”

He’s sitting there in the foreground. I had all these oil derricks in the background and on the side I had Wah-Sha-She [The Water People]. Instead of blood dripping, it was oil dripping, representing the blood. In the underpainting I had, there was blood splatters, but to show the transition of horse to the car, I had tire tracks coming. They started out as horse tracks, and they turned into tire tracks to the car. Anyway, that was referencing—I think I had text in there. I always liked, used to incorporate text of stories and facts. I would incorporate, collage it in there and paint over it but keep some evident so you can catch things that the message was being expressed.

That particular piece, it has some of those elements of it, but it was dealing with the 1920s, those Osage oil murders because my whole thing is that I wanted people to get from it what they wanted to, but at the same time get some factual information to make them look. “What was this? What’s he referencing,” or “What’s he talking about?” I didn’t want to put it out there, and it’s in your face and so political that you just can’t look at it. “Oh, my God it’s….” I have done some pieces like that, but I’m real subtle about it, I think, to a degree where they can enjoy it on their own level and then at the same time maybe go look up the information for themselves. That’s what I try to do: give them indirect little nuggets of information about our story, whatever that painting may be focusing on at that time, but that’s the funniest.

Little Thunder Yes.

Greenwood I think one of the highest compliments—the fact that I’m doing what I’m doing and people can relate to it and are engaged and want to have a piece of this experience in their home for however long, that, to me, that’s the highest compliment. That, and whenever I have another artist actually invest and want to buy something that I’ve done. I said, “Wow, that’s pretty cool.” I’ve done that, too. I’ve bought other artists’ works. You really do have—as an artist, too, you still are overcome by some people’s work. “Man, I got to have that, and I’m going to buy it.” That’s the coolest thing is that you can really have that effect on people. That, to me, I always used to say, that’s the reward. It’s not financial or anything like that. I don’t do it for the money. I do it for the sharing of a story, of a culture, of who we are.

To me, anything additional, that’s icing on the cake, but it’s more about getting my message out there and just doing it for the sake of doing it because I enjoy what I do. That’s what drives me. It’s not like, “If I paint this, I’m going to get five hundred dollars,” or, “If I do this I’m going to get….” It’s not about that, but it’s nice because it helps pay bills and helps fund my next art show. (Laughs) That’s always the fun side of it, but it’s a cycle, and it encourages us and encourages me as an artist to keep doing what I’m doing. It’s positive reinforcement that I can do this to the point where I was able to quit my full-time job at the US Postal Service. Although I work, still, somewhat a full-time job here, I’m local. I took a leap of faith. It’s public education. I’m able to supplement that income by my art sales and what I do. I knew this first year was going to be rough. We’re still in this first year. It’s been pleasantly….

Little Thunder As assistant director.

Greenwood Yeah, as a program assistant…

Little Thunder Right, program assistant.

Greenwood …yeah, which sounds all nice and big, but it just means you’re a “do this, do that.” No, I’m just kidding. (Laughter) This first year’s been…. Like I say, I was wondering, I was really thinking, “Okay, what’s plan B if this doesn’t work out, if we can’t make it with my art sales and art show money?” I can always go work at the post office here. I know the job, in and out, if it came down to that. Luckily, that hasn’t even been an option. The art opportunities keep coming up to where I got three shows next year already, so it’s really good. Like I said, it’s encouraging. It’s continuing to keep that cycle going and keeping me encouraged to do what I do.

Little Thunder Have you had any mural commissions yet?

Greenwood Yes, I’ve had, actually, two. The Poncas have commissioned me, and.…

Little Thunder For their tribal complex?

Greenwood Yes, it’s at the tribal affairs building. The funny thing about that is it’s still incomplete. It’s about 90 percent done, but it’s because at the time I had the contract, my mom was on the council. We had this contract in place, and I was working on it. I was supposed to have help. It’s an 18’ by 24’, eighteen foot tall by twenty-four foot wide, mural. It’s the history of our Ponca people, so I did the research. I took what stories I had. I’d visit with one of my elders who was in Bethany at the time, to study, not to study but to learn and to hear stories about our people and what would be best to express. He was really my greatest mentor for this piece. With that, I worked on this piece. Supposed to have help. My help never came through for me. My mom was like, “Well, that’s tough. You get the whole contract then.” I said, “Okay, cool.” I was working on it when I could, driving the miles, staying up there.

It was really hard to put a time frame on when I was going to finish it, I just knew I was going to finish it. It got to a point where it’s getting close to being finished but not quite, but then they have tribal elections, and a new council gets voted in. The way our politics are set up is we have a council, business council of seven members. Once four have the same agenda, they have the quorum. So you got these four new people in there that had all the same agenda, and that was to get the previous council out of there. Out with the old, in with the new, so there went my contract. It was being paid to me in four installments. I had three installments. When this new council went in, I went and sat before them a couple weeks after this transitional period and said, “Well, can I continue working on this? I can draw up a new contract if you want. This is how much left owed to me on this.”

The new chairperson that they voted in, “Brent, I don’t know,” he says. “You said that you wanted to do this for the people, and you wanted to do this for future generations like your children and their children.” He says, “I really appreciate that, and I think you should do that but do it for free.” (Laughs) I’m like, “Okay.” My cousin, she, luckily, was on the council, too, at that time, but she tried to take up for me. She says, “That’s good, but I’ll have you know that Brent, what he’s charging per square foot—normally those 12” by 12” paintings he sells are like four hundred fifty, five hundred bucks.” She threw that out there, which is true in some instances. For fundraisers and things like that, it can go as high as five hundred bucks for a 12” by 12”. What I was charging them

was, like, seventy-five dollars a square foot, something like that, something real affordable, right?

Then he said do it for free, and she tried to take up for me. Then he said, “We just don’t have the money. When it comes down to it, Brent, we don’t have the money, so if you could think about doing it for free, you can work on it,” and blah, blah, blah. In my mind, I didn’t say it, but I was like, “You know what? You also said on your platform you wanted to serve your people and do for your people. Why don’t you serve your people for free? Why don’t you sit in your position where you’re at as our chairman, and why don’t you do that for free, okay? Why am I any different? Is it because I’m an artist, and you think just because we can paint we should do this for free? That’s my vocation, in a way. I’m coming up here. It costs money for gas, costs money for food, costs money for these supplies, and my time. Just like your time is being spent to govern our tribe, and honestly I don’t know what you’re doing, but….” (Laughs)

You don’t have to leave that in there because I’m about to get political! (Laughter) No, I’m just kidding. Anyway, I left it at that. I bit my tongue. I didn’t say that, but I thought that. Anyway, I went and worked on it probably several months after that, but it got to a point where financially it wasn’t feasible for me to keep going up there. I said, “I need to get another grant or something to finish this up so I can get some more supplies and then clear-coat it.” What’s cool about the Chickasaws is they said they would come up there and photograph it for me with a panoramic and whatever. They would set the lights up and everything and photograph it. They said, “Once you get that finished, let us know. We’ll come up here and shoot it for you.”

Little Thunder Great.

Greenwood Anyway, that’s even more incentive for me to get it done, too. So that’s one. The other project is one I’m currently working on and about to finish up, and that’s with the Chickasaws. It was mentoring some youth with a mural project I have down in Tishomingo. That one’s at the refuge, National Wildlife Refuge. There’s an outlook building there, and they wanted a history of the area prior to the refuge, prior to when it became a refuge. I did the research. There again, did research, presented my idea, and mentored several youth over this past summer 2014 and worked on it. That was challenging, too, because I had one student that I mentored, she was like a true artist. I could sketch out something, the composition, and she could do it. I didn’t have to go back, “Okay, I’m going touch this up or touch that up.”

A couple of my students, I drew things out for them, and it was, “Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah, okay,” and they’d just talk. I’m advocating, “Paint outside the lines, man! Step outside that box,” but if I’m actually sketching something, there’s some times you got to paint within the lines and follow a design. They said they weren’t painters, so that mentoring project was fun, but also at times I wanted to go, “Oh, man, I could’ve been done with this part by now. I’m going to have to go back and touch it up.” Anyway, all of it aside, that process was great. I got to mentor some young people…

Little Thunder Right, what a great opportunity.

Greenwood …work with a great artist who, she just, lights out, she can draw anything that you put in front of her. Just from memory what she can do is amazing. She’s going to really go far in art. She’s already trying to challenge me. She says, “Hey, next year I’ll be eighteen, so I’ll be in your category.” I said, “That’s fine. Bring it!” That’s what’s great when you can really push young people…

Little Thunder Right, when you find they’re talented.

Greenwood …to do more and be better than I was or I am.

Little Thunder That’s very cool. One of your paintings was on the cover of the Oklahoma Native Tourism Guide. You remember how that came about?

Greenwood Yeah, that piece was commissioned. The cool thing about commission works—they used to scare me to death because I was like, “Oh, my God….” I would need to paint to my vision, not someone else’s. I always felt that was like taking away from what I wanted to do, my creative side, but it’s really not because I realize the commissions have come now that they see what I do. They like my style, so they give me free rein on what to do. They give me their ideas, and I’m like, “That’s not so hard.” If I take their ideas and interpret it through my means of expressing this or that or whatever, and tie that cultural aspect into it, that’s what they want. That’s what’s been cool about the commissions I have received is that they like my style, so it makes it easy for me to paint what they want. I focus on pulling out those elements that they request.

For the tourism guide, they wanted to focus on tribal peoples. They wanted to focus on the state itself, and breaking it up into tourism areas, as well as incorporating elements of Oklahoma. That’s what I did. I took those ideas. They didn’t tell me how to sketch it out or tell me what to paint. They told me what they wanted, and then how I interpreted that is what you saw on the tourism guide. What’s cool is

that as the painting took shape, it’s cool how all these things came together. I wanted to incorporate rose rocks, Oklahoma stuff, scissortails, rose rocks, the red dirt, our tribal entities, and different representations of tribal entities, so it went all Plains, feathers, you saw Eastern, like the feathered cap, skullcap, (I say skullcap) caps, or whatever, and the turbans.

You saw all this mix of tribal people, and it showed the range of who we are today. We’re not all buckskin and feathers. That’s definitely a part of it, but there’s also this side of it and this side of it. It shows the diversity of our people. That’s what I wanted to illustrate and incorporate some other designs, Southeastern designs like cattle designs and stuff like that. Anyway, I just took what we brainstormed about. That’s the way I approach my commissions. If I get a commission, I take my sketchbook, I go and sit down and visit with the person, and see what they want. Then from there I start doing my research and provide a blueprint, so to speak. Then they say, “Yeah, we like this. Can we have a little more of this? A little more of that?” Then I go forward.

Little Thunder How much of your work is commissions right now, do you think?

Greenwood It’s still probably like a third.

Little Thunder A third? That’s good.

Greenwood Yeah, and two of the pieces that sometimes aren’t always commissioned, I get asked to use them for conferences. I’m going to be going out to San Diego for a wellness conference, and they want something dealing with healing. Just so happens, I finished this piece called Alikchi, “the healer” in Chickasaw, which was a piece at the Kramer School of Nursing at Oklahoma City University. That’s what’s cool is I still have rights to that image; I still own that image. They own the painting, obviously, (they commissioned me for it) but the piece really spoke to that conference. I said, “That’d be perfect for it,” and they liked it, too, for the wellness conference. They used that image. With that it’s kind of cool because when you get picked up for a conference like that, (well, you know) usually they give you a hotel room, an exhibitor space, and an honorarium, so I got that. Looking forward to going to San Diego!

Little Thunder Yeah, that’ll be wonderful. So what’s been one of the most—one of your best honors, do you think, up to this point?

Greenwood Definitely, hands down, it’s got to be the honor that my wife and I received for being Parents of the Year. That happened in 2009. The National Indian Education Association selected us. We won the

Oklahoma Indian Parents of the Year in 2008 and was like, “Man, how’d we do that?” (Laughter) That put us up for running for the national honor. What’s cool, too, about that is at that time for NIEA, they had always selected one parent. It was called Parent of the Year. My wife and I, we were the first to be nominated as Parents, so we set a precedent after that. I think the year after that a Crow couple won. I think there may be another couple that won since then, but to me, I was like, “Wow, it’s always just been ‘parent’?” To me, parenting goes hand-in-hand, and sometimes it takes a village to raise your family. It hasn’t been just us; I just don’t credit us.

We’ve had good support from my parents, my wife’s family, as well. My son always says, “It’s just because we’re awesome kids. That’s why y’all got nominated, right?” (Laughter) Another funny thing to that, too, when we won I think my kids—this is like, what, 2009. Five years ago my son was thirteen; my daughter was ten, respectively. They were about that age. When I won, we’re being congratulated and everything, and this guy says, “Oh, congratulations.” He says, “How old are your kids?” I said, “Fourteen and eleven,” thirteen and ten, whatever. He said, “Oh, okay. I was really going to be impressed if they were teenagers and you won this.” (Laughter) He said, “Wait until they’re teenagers.” I said, “Oh, okay, thanks a lot.” I can see what he means now. It’s challenging. He said, “Yeah, wait until they’re teenagers.” (Laughter)

Little Thunder That’s great.

Greenwood I was trying to keep my answers short as possible, but once I start talking, I have to cut myself off. My wife tells me I talk too much, so you will edit this right?

Little Thunder No. (Laughs)

Greenwood Only certain things that I want cut out.

Little Thunder It’s all good.

Greenwood Okay.

Little Thunder Okay, I’d like to talk about your creative process and techniques a little bit. You work mostly in acrylics on canvas or board, I think. What do you like about that format?

Greenwood Well, I work more on paper. I don’t work on board necessarily.

Little Thunder Oh, okay.

Greenwood It’s paper, so I can incorporate the drawing aspect of what I do. I still find myself wanting to draw. I incorporate the drawing and then go back in with some paint. That mixed media aspect, I like that. The majority of my works are primarily acrylics on canvas. I like a lot of texture. I like color, obviously. The texture, a lot of times, I’ll use rice paper. I like rice paper. If I want to create texture for clouds and things like that, I’ll use rice paper, or I’ll use a gel medium for textures in clothing to kind of see folds or ripples. What I do is I’ll sketch things out in charcoal, then I’ll get my gel medium and start going with the form and whatever. I like doing that. Sometimes I’ll use the coarse pumice gel for dirt or landscape. I like a lot of texture, so you see that, and obviously collage. I’ll collage papers, and I’ve used fabric. Especially on some of my pieces that are referencing ledger art, I’ll use papers. You can see all the papers in the background.

Little Thunder Right, right.

Greenwood I got all these papers I like using for shirts.

Little Thunder Cool-looking papers, yeah.

Greenwood I like collecting different papers to use for shirt designs and things like that. I like using a wide variety of things. Acrylic on canvas is my primary medium.

Little Thunder Yeah, I love the care that you put into the clothing when you paint, you know, depicting clothing. It gets as much love and attention as the rest of the composition.

Greenwood Thanks. Like I say, I enjoy it.

Little Thunder Do you think it comes from also being a dancer, your background?

Greenwood Yeah, that helps. I mean, a lot of times I’m having to pose, too, for it.

Little Thunder Oh, you are?

Greenwood Yeah, if I want a certain fold in a shirt, I pull out my Indian shirts, and I’ll put them on, and I’ll be in front of the mirror, posing or taking pictures of myself. (Laughter)

Little Thunder And taking a picture? Okay.

Greenwood Yeah. Those are the only selfies I do. (Laughs) All these young people take selfies these days. I do it for artful purposes, and that’s it.

Sometimes I just want to get those folds. Everything doesn’t have to be exactly the way it is known. I like to get a certain fold, and then from that it helps me in future paintings. I did it so I know how to do it again, so I’m going to create these folds in the shirt. Even for this piece here, I probably put on this shirt. I had a photo to reference, but sometimes those photos are grainy and old. I need to see how the shirt would look for real, so I’ll put on a shirt and get those folds just right and sketch them out. Then you know for some of my figurative pieces, too, I’ll have my son or my wife or my daughter model. “Can you hold your hand out like this,” or, “Can you stand like this?” (Laughs) They serve as my models sometimes, too.

Little Thunder You’ll be sketching, or will you take a photograph, or both?

Greenwood Both. Yeah, I usually take a photo for reference because they go, (Sighs). (Laughs) I don’t want to have them stand there forever, so I’ll sketch them out real quick. I’ll take a photo, then I’ll sketch it out real quick, then I’ll go back to the photo and touch up.

Little Thunder What other kinds of research do you do aside from sketching and photographs?

Greenwood I used to read books a lot, I guess from school, just to get more knowledge and information. I think it hasn’t happened as much because I started painting from a place of knowing. These stories, our stories of like Ponca for instance, our tradition is told in the songs, and I’ve interpreted that into paintings. I’ve taken things that my elders have expressed to me. It could’ve been a humorous story, or it could’ve been a teaching about how the Native American hand game came to be, whatever. It could’ve been something as complex or as simple as that. It’s just researching first-hand, try to get the information firsthand, and then reading. Like I said, I need to do more reading. I haven’t done as much here lately because I always had the people I needed to talk to here with me. That’s how I would get a lot of my information, then recollection of stories and things I grew up hearing.

Little Thunder How about titles for your paintings?

Greenwood Usually the title happens before, and I paint to that. It’s probably about fifty-fifty now. Used to be, always the title came first because that was the idea. “Okay, cool, I like that phrase.” The title would pop in my head. “I’m going to paint something to that title.” Now it’s fifty-fifty, like this piece back here, the three pieces that was actually inspired from a piece I did for Indian Market like in 2004 or ’5, around that time frame. It was one of those pieces where I took it to Santa Fe and worked on it in the hotel room. I didn’t get any professional photos made of it,

and I sold it that weekend, so all I have is a 4” by 5” glossy photo of it. That’s it. It was never professionally shot or anything. Someone had saw that, they liked it, and they wanted me to reproduce that for a commission piece for a festival.

I said, “I can do that,” with the same style. Definitely won’t use the same kind of composition. I did it in the way as far as the figurative women, but then I used different elements to represent different styles of women, clothing. Then the elk’s teeth, that’s kind of like three- dimensional element I like to add. Sometimes I will add horsehair or shells or elk’s teeth just to add that Native element. I like to do that, too. Like I said, I like to experiment. I like to have fun with art. Just to always have to be steady, 2-D easel painting, I like to experiment, therefore I use papers, material, rice paper, what have you, incorporate drawing and painting, charcoal, in this case elk’s teeth. I like to keep it fresh and keep the ideas a fresh approach to what I do, relying on that traditional elements.

Little Thunder What is your creative process once you get an idea?

Greenwood What’s been kind of cool here lately is I’ve done more live paints here of late. Seems like that’s becoming a popular…. It’s taking on more popularity now. People like to see that process. I think it’s really cool as an artist to be able to engage with a audience and for them to see that process. Sometimes it’s not even about me finishing a piece, although that’s my goal. (Laughs) Sometimes I like for them to see the process and what happens during that process. It’s like action painting. It’s really into it, like (imitates brush stroke sound). I think that’s what’s cool about live painting is people seeing the process and are able to engage on a certain level with that and connecting. That’s talking about live painting, but getting back to my regular pieces, what was the question again?

Little Thunder Your creative process once you get an idea.

Greenwood Once I get an idea. In a way it seems kind of formal, I think, because I do, when I get an idea, I sketch it out.

Little Thunder You do, and you keep it in a notebook too?

Greenwood I have sketchbooks, yeah. For instance, I just did a piece for a fundraiser for the Five Civilized Tribes Museum. It was called Rock Your Mocs, and it was just paintings on shoes, blank shoes. I kind of knew what I wanted to do, but you always don’t know if it’s going to work. I have to sketch it out, and then I play around with it. “Okay, this works. This doesn’t,” until finally you come to a point, “This will look

cool.” So you go with that. I wanted to do butterflies. I had to sketch out—“How are we going to do these butterfly wings on these shoes?” I sketched it out to get it the way I wanted, and then it took a shape of its own, came to life. That’s the way it is in a lot of paintings. I sketch out what I want to do first. There’s this ledger piece that I’m working on, and before I even mess up my ledger paper (Laughter) because I know ledger paper is old, I’m going to sketch it out first the way I want it. Then I’ll use this as my model to get this design onto my ledger paper.

I always have to sketch it out first so I can get it just how I want it. When it comes to, especially, my figurative pieces, all the other stuff happening in the background, the color, I want that stuff to be real loose, the way the color blends with one another. Then my figurative pieces, I start tying things in a little bit more, but it all starts out with a sketch. Too, as you well know, sometimes what you see initially doesn’t always end up the way you think it will. That’s what’s cool about it, too. Sometimes it morphs into something else. It evolves. It changes. One of my influences (he really is a great influence on what I do) is Mark Rothko. I always appreciated his approach and how he was as engaged with his work as people that saw it. Whatever they felt, it was like they were in that place with him at that time, even though he wasn’t there physically with them. It’s whatever he was doing in his pieces, it transcended beyond him because people really….

It’s taken me on a journey, his palette and particularly his paintings of what they call color-filled paintings, which aren’t really color-filled paintings but those abstract pieces. He wanted the viewer to be evoked by something that they saw. That’s what my approach is. If they can’t engage, “He can’t really paint faces,” if that’s what they think, cool, but if there’s something else in there that can get them, maybe my color usage and the way I combine these colors, that’s what I want to get them so they can appreciate the fact that I’m working with shadows, not so much eyelids, a mouth, a nose. I want that color palette to tie everything in together for them. My process, the point I’m getting to, is that during my process, the closer it is for my painting to start…as it takes shape and starts to finish up, I have to sit there and just look at it. I heard Rothko would sit in front of his painting for hours, just looking at it.

I don’t take that long, (Laughter) but I might sit in front of it for ten minutes or fifteen minutes, looking at it and seeing, “How is this speaking to me as an artist? Do I need to work on this more? Do I need to move over here?” I become really engaged, and that’s what’s really cool about it is that I realize the closer I am to finishing a piece, the more it draws me in and the more I see myself sitting back and looking at it, stepping away and just looking. That’s what’s cool about art. It’s

hard to explain sometimes. I can do that when I see someone’s work I really do admire, to see their process and see where they were at when they created this one area. It puts me in my place of engagement, you know. That’s part of my process, too, that I really do like and try to transcend even what I do so that when it’s in front of a total stranger, they get engaged. They can see that point in time, maybe, where I was working on this and, “Oh, there’s so much to this. This area really speaks to me.” Maybe they can feel that, too.

Little Thunder Right.

Greenwood That’s what, during the process, I want my work, in a way, to have that same kind of feeling and reaction from people.

Little Thunder Can you talk about your signature a little bit? Pretty straightforward?

Greenwood Yeah. It’s funny, when I first started…. That was a funny thing: How do you really develop a signature, right? First of all, my penmanship is crappy. (Laughter) I can’t write penmanship for nothing. I guess I could when I was younger, but it was too structured. Then as I got older, I don’t know if it’s part of being lazy or whatever, but it was always too tight. As I got into college and stuff, when it came down to my signature, it was pretty simple at first. Then, probably like a lot of artists, I started working on it. I start trying to work on a signature. I look all these artists’ nice signatures. “Okay, I need to work on mine, too.” In the beginning it was totally illegible. Just like bunch of scribbles (mimics scribbling noise). You could see a B, but then it was a bunch of up-and-down lines. You could see a G, then it was a bunch of up-and-down lines.

Even that started to mature, and then I started getting really, putting R, E, and T. Still had this up-and-down structure, but yet there was still a little more definition to it, a little more, I don’t want to say sensibility about it but it started taking shape. It became more artsy to kind of (mimics swooshing sound) instead of being, “Ah!” and crazy. Not to say that those simple signatures like some artists have where it’s maybe a couple lines, even those quick marks, there’s something about that that’s really, “That’s an awesome signature,” to have something simple like that. Mine’s pretty straightforward: “Brent Greenwood.” Sometimes it’s “B. Greenwood.” Sometimes it’s just “Brent.” It all depends on the size of the piece and where I want to put it. Sometimes I sign it on the left; sometimes it’s on the right. Sometimes it’s up, vertical. Sometimes it’s on the side.

What I didn’t want to do, however I signed it, I didn’t want it to take away from my piece. I know some artists have said because of that,

they’ll sign the back only. I’ll sign the back, too, but I want my signature to be somewhere on there, but if it takes away from the piece itself, I’m not going to put it on there. I’ll put it on the side, at least. Whenever I use my signature, I’ll usually use a color that’s in the painting too, same kind of color. I’ll put it in a place that’s subtle, that’s real subtle, but yet it’s still there because I don’t want it to take away from everything else happening. I could’ve just put it up there in nice big brown letters, but to me it would take away from this whole thing happening. I still want it in there, but I want it to be subtle, not to take away from anything else happening in the piece.

Little Thunder You have many more years to paint, but I am wondering so far, looking back, what was an important fork in the road when you could’ve gone one way and you chose to go this other way?

Greenwood I think I mentioned that in the sense of when I look back, it was probably that Red Earth rejection. I really could’ve started going this other direction of painting faces and doing whatever. Then luckily my wife kind of headed me off at the pass. Said, “Nope, don’t do that.” I guess I have her to thank for me continuing to do what I do in that sense with the painting and staying true to who I was as an artist. That was probably one major fork. The other has been the challenge of maintaining a job to pay the bills as well as be an artist. Many nights I’ve been staying up all night, and I go to work. I don’t need to be doing that. It’s tough. You know deadlines. You got to meet your deadlines. It’s like having another job on top of your full-time job, so that was a challenge. In a sense to where at times I’d be lying if I didn’t say I didn’t want to give up. There’s times I say, “It’s just easier. Can I make this a true hobby and do it whenever I want and put it away for a while? Can I just go play golf?” I don’t play golf, (Laughs) but that was going to give me a chance to. “Can I just….” I don’t want to say “be like everybody else,” but, “Can I just come home and have a beer and watch football, whatever?” (Laughs)

That would be the easy way out. My friend, rest in peace, Dan Lomahaftewa, we shared some gallery time together. He said, “Being an artist isn’t easy.” He said, “You know what? It’s not.” I’ve heard that being an artist, being Indian’s not easy because being Indian, too, you’re having to juggle your obligations of your culture. First and foremost, really, you’re always going to be Indian and who you are. At the same time, you got to provide for your family, got to put a roof over your head, food on the table, clothes on their back. You have to have a way to make ends meet. Singing at powwows or just trying to live on your artwork sometimes, for me, it was feast or famine. I just couldn’t see myself doing it. I was like, “Man, it would just be easier to get up at six a.m. and go to work and come home and know I had a paycheck

coming in.” The post office is a good paycheck, but after so long of doing that, some years of doing that, nineteen years of doing that, I realized that’s not what I want.

I didn’t feel like I was fulfilling my duty as an artist because I was always going to be an artist. I try to take it easy, but it’s always calling me back. I’m always coming back to it. I can take a break real easy. I can take a break, but I always end up getting back into it one way or the other. Sometimes I have had, it’s like writer’s block. I’ve had a creative block where I just don’t feel like doing nothing. I could see myself at that time. It’s because I was coming home from work at the post office, so tired, so drained that I didn’t feel doing anything. I didn’t feel like doing art. Days can turn into weeks real quick, but, like I said, something was always calling me back in the studio to get back to work. I just know I never could put it away, so that’s why I said, “It’s really picking up. I’m really staying busy with it now. I need to focus on getting closer to home and doing this more.” Even though it’s my part-time job, it is my primary source of income. I enjoy that, the flexibility I have to be able to do what I do, and people enjoy it, too.

I guess, in short, I feel really blessed to be able to do what I’m doing, like anyone that is a musician or an actor and gets paid to do what they love to do. It’s a awesome feeling. Even working at Indian Education right now, I’m very fulfilled at what I do, helping the students, helping them with cultural enrichment, helping them stay on top of their grades. Sometimes I’m like, “I get paid to do this?” because it’s what I know. I’m a advocate for education, higher education. I’m a advocate for the arts and our culture, especially culture. I want our kids up here, our Indian Education kids—because this is a urban setting. I know not all of them are in tune or aware of that, but I want to make it as available as much possible to teach them, to help them. Not teach them, but help them be aware of, “You know what? You’re Chickasaw. You’re Arapaho. You’re not just Native American. You have a people; you have a culture, a tribe. You have these ceremonies, these dances. We do things in an intertribal sense. Come do this with us.” I’ve been teaching some little small artwork shops for the students, working with them here and there. It’s been great. That’s where I feel like I’m at. I feel very fulfilled and able to continue to do what I do.

Little Thunder Is there anything else you’d like to add or we haven’t covered before we look at your artwork?

Greenwood No, I think I’ve talked enough. I just think it all comes from a place of knowing. I don’t paint anything that I don’t feel like I haven’t researched. Obviously, I’m going to look up, I’m going to study what I’m painting, what I’m wanting to portray. I do reference photos from

different things, mainly for poses and things like that, but I don’t paint to mimic. I don’t paint to copy this photo or that photo. Some of my wildlife pieces, I’ll reference photos, but then I got to make it more impressionistic, and I got to do this or that to it because I don’t ever want it to be just like someone’s photo or other piece of interpretive work. Even though it is a photograph, it’s someone else’s thought and idea.

That’s the way they decide to shoot that image, right? I’m just going to reference it. I’m not going to copy it. I don’t know. I like to say that because that’s what I try to teach the kids I mentor. I teach at the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy, too, which is now the Chickasaw Arts Academy because it’s going to be an ongoing thing throughout the year. That’s one of the things I tell them. You can reference photos but make it your own. That’s where the creative side, that creative nature’s going to come out. The artistic side of you is really going to come out. Reference it but then make it your own, your own interpretation. How you take it in here and how it comes up through here, it’s got to be you. That’s what I try to impress upon them because that’s what I do. Anyway, that’s where I’m coming from as an artist.

Little Thunder Okay. Well, we’ll take a look at your paintings real quick.

Greenwood Okay.

Little Thunder Okay, Brent, would you like to tell us a little bit about this painting?

Greenwood Yes, this piece is called Bringing Up the Sun. It’s really become kind of a signature piece of mine. It’s used widely throughout the Chickasaw Nation. It’s cool how art sometimes tends to fall into place for you and happen the way it does. What I wanted to do with this piece was, obviously, express the Stomp Dance. The way I did it was I wanted to show the energy, the movement, and the style of the dancer. What I did was I had these Southeastern-style motifs, like the scrollwork design happening. I’ve seen that throughout different artifacts and things, but I wanted to interpret it into another way instead of just being typical, “Okay, we can put this simple scrollwork design.” Like I told you earlier, looking at it but then reinterpreting it in my own way.

I put this here as a design element. For people, it’s become smoke of the fire; it’s become dust from the stomp dancer. That’s cool because they’ve interpreted it as that, so I’ve let them, however they want to see it. I want it to be a simple design. Anyway, with that I incorporated these sun circles in the background. The sun circles, to me, the way these ended up, it reads from left to right. I didn’t even plan this. I liked these particular sun circles and the movement of them, so I put them on here. After I got them on here, I’m like, “Wow, that really does have, like, a flow.” To me, this one on the left, represents the morning star right here, the sun, how it begins to come up so you can see some of these sun rays.

Then we move over to the next one. To me, that’s like broad daylight. You’ve got the sun; you’ve got the bright white of the sun. Then it transitions into night, so you’ve got this whirlwind or this spiral design. You see night and day until you ultimately end up on the far right, and you’ve got this crescent moon. You’ve got a total nighttime sun circle, so to speak. There’s a lot of underpainting happening in this. I wanted the warm colors of the fire to be evident. That’s why you see this nice warm tones and the stars, obviously, but then I got this magenta happening. Like I said, I always have two or three colors of red or magenta, of oranges, of yellows working, so as I’m painting, I can blend them onto my canvas. I work with three or four different colors at a time. It’s never one color straight out the tube and then try to blend with another one onto my palette. To make one color, I create that blending effect on my canvas with the colors, the two or three colors. Anyway, this one’s called Bringing Up the Sun.

Little Thunder That’s neat. How about this piece?

Greenwood This piece, I saw this photo. There’s this photo that really stood out to me of this…. My wife, like I said, she’s a graphic designer, so she always puts together these calendars for her tribe. In this one particular picture, she had this Otoe man painting all these designs on the side of a tipi. That got to me in a way. The message for me, that I got from it, was that we’re still doing our thing in the traditional sense by telling our stories, the traditional stories, representing our traditional designs and motifs, but we’re doing it in a modern sense with a modern sensibility of design and materials. I took the idea of the man painting the tipi, except [instead] of him painting typical ledger-style horses or marks, he’s got more of a graffiti-esque design element going on. But within this, there’s still elements of symbolism that are Native. I got the handprint, which in turn when I put this on there, I totally saw a buffalo head. I put those eyeballs in there, so there’s a buffalo head in there.

There’s this horse design and these designs right here are like hoofmarks, hoof prints. Then you got the crescent moon, star, cross, what have you, and that’s like a leaf pattern. There’s all these traditional elements of design but yet done in contemporary sense. Like I said, he’s still got the typical, kind of an old, maybe a stick, whatever, that’s dipped in paint that he’s using, but yet you got this graffiti-style stuff happening, real modern elements. The color combinations is kind of graffiti-esque, too. Everything else—this is typical of a Otoe floral pattern and the style of beadwork. The Otoe beadwork is notable because everything is outlined in white beads. That’s why I wanted to make sure I referenced that. It wasn’t actually a pattern that was on the man itself, but I took that pattern from something else that was Otoe and incorporated it into my own to come up with this design.

I kept my background real soft and kind of subtle. I always like things that have a subtlety to it when it comes to my landscapes, almost kind of like a romantic style of painting in a way, but then you got this other real, “in your face, here it is, it’s coming at you.” This particular piece is called Old Man Wild Style (Laughter) because of this graffiti. There’s a style of graffiti that is called Wild Style. Just by calling it Old Man Wild Style—we sometimes reference our elderly people when we say, “old man.” We might say, “Old Man So and So,” or, “Old Man This Guy.” It’s so weird talking about the elders. This is like conveying those thoughts of the traditional, yet we’re using new elements, materials, and new interpretations of who we are and what we are as far as symbolism and how it’s speaking to a new generation of artists.

Little Thunder All right, how about this painting?

Greenwood This piece is referencing the strength of the woman and the importance of her in our life, the giver of life for us, the bearer of our children. This piece is actually called Native Sisters. I wanted to just reference the different style of Indian women with different tribal elements, but yet we’re all connected. We’re all Indian. We’re all Native. Like my wife and her best friends, they call each other sister girls. Indian way, when you take on an Indian friend, they’re your friend for life. I saw this as

speaking to that idea, so that’s why I called it Native Sisters. They’re all connected, they’re sisters, yet they’re different tribes, but yet they’re still connected in that way. The strength of the woman, the status of the woman is expressed up here with the elk’s teeth because if there was a lot of elk’s teeth (even though none of these women have elk’s teeth on their dress) I’m still referencing that thought or that idea that that was kind of a status symbol. The more highly you were thought of, the more special you were if you had a lot of elk’s teeth on your dress. It was a status symbol. This one, too, the background and everything takes a Rothko-esque type of painting approach. That’s kind of what I wanted to express with this piece. The bottom line is the subject matter of the Native sisters and that whole idea.

Little Thunder Right. I really like that one.

Greenwood This is the first time I really portrayed—this is taken from ledger style. It’s the first time I’ve portrayed a Southeastern-style woman or figure in this sense. It’s not typical ledger to see Southeastern style of art in that sense. I might be contradicting myself in a small sense because I said I don’t cross the two, but in this sense it’s different. It’s more of a interpretation of this style, yet it’s done in totally Southeastern-style clothing, although you see the style of ledger it’s still interpreting. I don’t know if I’m making sense. (Laughter) I’m trying not to confuse as to say….

Little Thunder Well, it’s a record, yeah.

Greenwood Yeah, it’s the record…

Little Thunder Record of the Southeastern.

Greenwood …yeah. It’s done in a ledger style…

Little Thunder Right.

Greenwood …but not to confuse, it’s not ledger art. (Laughter) It’s influenced by ledger, but it’s not ledger art. I’ll just leave it at that.

Little Thunder Okay, here we’re looking at your hummingbird piece. Want to tell us about this a little bit?

Greenwood This is a black-chinned hummingbird. With this piece, I wanted to create movement. I had Southeastern style of motifs in mind. You see that zigzag pattern? To me, I could see that hummingbird flying all over the place, so that represents movement. There again, like in Bringing Up the Sun where I had like those scroll designs, I used them again to represent the movement of wind, air with its wings. That’s what that represents in this one. This one’s a straightforward kind of piece. Sometimes you just….

Little Thunder It looks like—is it two canvases?

Greenwood Yeah, another thing is I like to paint on thicker canvases. One of my friends had did this before, and I said, “Hey, I got some thin canvases I want to,” not get rid of, but I could use them, so I ended up putting together two small canvases to make a thick one…

Little Thunder I see. Yeah, that’s cool.

Greenwood …just because I like the thicker ones. But this one is straightforward. It’s just sometimes I have a hankering to paint a hummingbird, just to do it, so that’s why I did. I’ve done a couple of hummingbirds now, and

I’ve done butterflies, and hummingbirds. We have a book on insects, so I’ll reference that for butterflies. That was a black-chinned hummingbird.

Little Thunder Thank you very much for your time today, Brent.

Greenwood Thanks, it was great!

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