Original Painting "Mimbres Man and his Shadow" [SOLD]

Helen Hardin, from the very beginning of her career, was at the cutting edge of Indian-influenced art. Her art, though obviously drawing on her Indian heritage and tradition, was very much in the mainstream of modern aesthetics.

This piece of Hardin’s is truly a work of exceptional drafting skills and superlative technical rendering. Quite extraordinary and striking, as the work of Hardin tends to be, it displays a true sense of the complexities and intricacies involved in the creation of such a piece.

The Mimbres Man and his Shadow, at first look, yields the image of the Mimbres in the foreground and his dark shadow in the back. Yet upon a closer look, one can see that to the left of the Mimbres there appears another shadow, if it can be called a shadow, because this image of the Mimbres is lighter than the background color. The end result is a Mimbres in the middle of the frame with his dark shadow behind him on his right and his light shadow behind him on his left and what appears to be a mountainous divide cutting through the middle of both shadows.

Note: There are two small areas of paint damage (visible in the second detail image—just click the link above to view). The first area is just to the right of the face at eye-level and the second is at the cane right of the hand.