John Watt: Portraits of Navajo Land
March 6 to April 22, 2008 in the Gallery

“My father – artist, actor, and author, Malcolm “Sparky” Watt, had an enormous influence on me and on my decision to pursue art as a career. It was his passing that inspired me to paint. In 1965 he took us on an extensive trip to Indian Country, including Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley and the ruins at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Keet Seel, Montezuma’s Castle and Tonto. It had a profound impact on me, but it would be another forty years before I was ready to paint about it.”

For more than three decades, Watt’s father made numerous trips to Navajo Land, inspired by the landscape and befriended by the people and their lifeways. He took thousands of photographs and created hundreds of paintings. After his father’s death, Watt discovered several of his unfinished paintings and vowed to finish what his father started. Using his father’s color slides from the 1950s and 1960s for inspiration, Watt has continued his father’s legacy.

The paintings presented here dovetail with the theme of our Navajo weaving exhibit. Paintings include some of the activities centered around tending sheep herds, sheering, carding and spinning the sheep’s wool and the process of weaving on traditional upright looms.