Description: “Seenoevil: Resurrection Of Chief Big Foot” shows the famous Wounded Knee photo of Big Foot in death, rising from the sea turtle’s back. The upper half shows the Sky Dome, the realm of the spirit world where the ancestors reside. The seven stars represent the past 7 generations of ancestors. There are lightening bolts connecting the sky to the earth, Thunder Beings, whose electricity helped create the universe.
The lower half shows the Earth Plane (globe) with the turtle as the symbolic foundation for the land that supports (nurtures) all life. The turtle has inhabited the earth going back to the time of dinosaurs. Nothing can escape it’s vision, yet it dons protective eyewear to diffuse the damaging glare of man’s blindness.
I came up with this image by mixing and matching motifs that are repeated in other works. In this case, the turtle motif acting as the foundation for the Bigfoot motif begets a third meaning. It so happens that the turtle is a female icon and correlates to the water element on the wheel, which relates to birth and regeneration. The Wounded Knee military campaign marked the defeat of the Lakota, the last free Indians. The way I combined the symbols here talks about the eminent regeneration of Native Americans seven generations later.
Originally, the use of the turtle in my art derived from the burial mound motif as I developed my themes. As I made connections over time, I realized the mound was like a womb. From that arched shape, a turtle took form organically. Recently, I read that the triune of stars making up Orion, is referred to as a turtle, and is the cosmic birthplace of the Solar/Corn God during the summer solstice. But the original turtle information came to me as a by-product of the creative process!
Rising from the turtles back, the famous photo of Lakota Chief Big Foot in death at Wounded Knee signifies the defeat and resurrection of the last free Indian Nations. Also shown are the tree of peace, the globe, the blue flame of purpose (half way up the tree), as it came to me in a dream.
Medium: mixed media composite using photos, feathers, original acrylic
paintings, pencil drawings, relief prints & digital editing.
Print Format: variable media
Print Dimensions: multiple sizes