Navajo Couple Riding among a Herd of Horses [SOLD]

Navajo artist Anthony Chee Emerson has developed a whimsical style that incorporates both traditional Navajo cultural values and a modernist approach. Emerson is a native of the Four Corners area where, as a self-taught artist, he paints Navajo settings and people. His colorful renditions of Navajo life reflect upon the important values of family and tradition.

In this painting, Chee has a Navajo man and woman cheerfully riding their horses among a stampede of horses.  They appear to be happy and carefree so it must not be a serious stampede. 

The young woman is dressed in the traditional way of a Navajo woman with a calico broom skirt and a blouse adorned with silver. She wears a concha belt and her hair is fashioned in the traditional Navajo bun. She gallops high over her homeland, the dry yet sacred country between the four mountains of the Navajo. She is the connection between the past and the future. The Navajo man, too, is dressed in traditional clothing of the period.  He wears a black hat with a hatband, a concha belt and bola tie and traditional moccasins.  They both appear young, happy and enjoying the day.

Anthony Chee Emerson was born in 1963 in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. He attended school and graduated from Rehoboth High School in 1980, attended Dordt College, Sioux Center, IA and University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM. He graduated with Associates of Arts Degree from San Juan College in 2004.

Emerson began his professional art career in 1982, and participated in the Santa Fe Indian Market and Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial that year, and has continued every year since. He currently resides in Farmington, New Mexico.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: The Marvin and Betty Rubin Collection