Original Woody Crumbo Oil Painting “Peyote Bird” [SOLD]

Woody Crumbo painted this image of a Peyote Bird using oil paints on a sheet of linoleum.  Perhaps that is the canvas he had available or perhaps it was his choice for this painting.  No one knows why the choice but it was the choice of the artist to do so.

His rendition of the Peyote Bird is absolutely amazing.  His use of a multitude of colors and their placement brings the bird out from the panel on which it was painted.  The painting is somewhat three dimensional in that the artist carved some of the elements into the linoleum.  This is an amazingly beautiful bird.

Crumbo had a rather traumatic early life. His father died when he was four and his mother when he was seven. His schooling was interrupted for 10 years following 3rd grade. He returned to school at age 17 to study art, anthropology and history.

Crumbo’s painting Deer and Birds was the very first Native American painting acquired by Philbrook Art Center. Crumbo was a close friend of Thomas Gilcrease, founder of The Thomas Gilcrease Museum, as he assembled his famous art collection. He, Acee Blue Eagle and Willard Stone were the three Native Americans closest to Gilcrease.

Honors, public collections, awards, solo exhibits, commissions, public collections, media acknowledgments, and publications are far too many to even hint at listing in this limited space. Suffice it to say that Crumbo was a well-recognized Native American artist.

Provenance: sold by Henry Balink Fine Art Studio of Santa Fe to a Cerrillos, New Mexico, collector in 1987.  The original bill of sales accompanies the painting.

Recommended Reading: Great Paintings of the Old American West by Patricia Janis Broder.  Thomas Gilcrease Institute Collection.

Condition: original condition