Authenticity

Alan Greer, writing in his Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, about the portrait of St. Kateri that emerges from Claude Chauchetiere's biography, speaks of authenticity: "It was a full-scale vita sanctorum dedicated to a woman who remained to the end Mohawk in her appearance, her language, and her way of life."

The authenticity of language and a literary text, being abstractions, is different than a painting. Because we take so much of our visual culture for granted, it is easy to end up composing with anachronisms and cultural irregularities. At one time in history convention dictated that figures in a painting must wear togas. Indeed, Benjamin West, an early American artist famously broke with this convention in his The Death of General Wolf. The scandal that resulted from Mr. West depicting soldiers in their typical attire seems surprising today. Yet even today much of our visual culture is based more upon convention and tradition than an understanding of culture and history. We're just too close to see it.

© Howard Terpning

A more recent example artist known for the authenticity of his paintings, and the lengths to which he has gone to achieve that dimension of realism, is Howard Terpning. My grandfather knew him when they were both working in Los Angeles. Mr. Terpning is perhaps most widely known for his illustrations which appeared on the movie posters for Lawrence of Arabia and The Sound of Music. But his greatest accomplishments have been in his paintings of Native Americans.

I admire Mr. Terpning as much for the quality of his paintings, as I do for his diligence as a scholar. He goes to great lengths to be sure that his paintings of the Blackfoot, Cree, and Shoshone are an accurate testimony to the visual culture and traditional practices of the tribe. There are few artists who are willing to assemble their own collections of the artwork and craftwork of many different tribes, and to trek into remote areas to sketch the natural landscape. Mr. Terpning was known, even in his 70's, to mount extensive expeditions into the Colorado backcountry in order to capture that extra element that differentiates representation and authenticity. The student of painting can learn much from his brushwork: the evidences of dexterous maneuvers between expressive passion and a graceful elegance. The student of history could learn from his rigorous methodology.

His work is an inspiration to me. I hope to accomplish something similar in the portraits I will soon begin. I want to depict St. Kateri not only as a Christian and a Saint, but as Mohawk.