Jim Franklin, Many Goats, 2018
Here’s the photograph by Roland Reed, ca.1913
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Awesome piece, Tom! The photo is wonderful as well. I’m digging that concho belt and squash blossom!! 
Now, if we could only get eyes on what appears to be his bandolier bag…
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Good one, Aaron! Ray Swanson is one of my favs. He was one of the best at accurately and beautifully capturing the Navajo culture on canvas. So sad he passed at the early age of 67 and to think what else could have come from his mind and hand.
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There’s no doubt about that! He’s one of my favorites as well. All of his works that I’ve laid eyes on are absolutely captivating.
I’ve always enjoyed photographs and paintings of Navajo life containing the younger generations, they unfailingly make me smile. Another of Swanson’s masterpieces, Arvena’s Baby Lamb, is no exception!
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ohhhhh that’s killer. would love to have a print of that.
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This one is particularly good, totally wild—if subtle—compositional stuff going on. The relationship between the corn and the basket, the way the uppermost pot only half-echoes the hills, the ever-so-slight distortion in the line, the curious (even unsettling) sherds, the mirroring of the sky/hill to map the turquoise…! What an image! It gets stranger and stranger the longer I look at it. There are all these brilliant subversions of what I expect from Southwestern still-life, but so subtle. Very sneaky surrealist qualities, very smart work. I love it.
ETA: I very rarely see my exact favorite color in art; that orange in the corn/basket is as close as I’ve gotten in a long time!
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I owned one of Jim Abeita’s paintings for a couple of years back in the 70’s. Bought it from Turney’s in Gallup, and eventually sold it to my friends Tom and Judy Case. Have looked high and low for an image of it to post. It was a large painting of a wizened Navajo woman in traditional dress, so detailed it was nearly photorealistic. The painting was featured on or near the back of one of the Arizona Highways issues. I think I paid 2K for it, which was a chunk of money at that time. Really enjoyed it for the time that I owned it.
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I recall Tom sharing a couple of Jim’s paintings earlier in the thread. Upon stumbling across these today during research, I felt compelled to add them. Jim has such a way of capturing the Navajo life, in a most natural way.
That’s so neat that you owned one of his paintings, Mike, and that it was in Arizona Highways! I’ve seen a few portraits of Navajo women painted by Jim’s hand, but I’m very interested in seeing the one you owned, it sounds like a wonderful example of realism.
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Love it (and love AZ Highways)! Plus that’s the month/yr I was born 
Maybe that’s why I love this art form 
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