When the Rainbow Touches Down [SOLD]

When The Rainbow Touches Down

Subtitle: The Artists and Stories Behind the Apache, Navajo, Rio Grande Pueblo and Hopi Paintings in the William and Leslie Van Ness Denman Collection

Tryntje Van Ness Seymour

The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ

Softcover, 1988, 394 pages, beautifully illustrated in color

From the Back Cover:

Art, culture and traditional beliefs come alive through the works and words of Southwestern Native American painters in When The Rainbow Touches Down. Tryntje Van Ness Seymour sought out artists, elders, collectors and dealers to present the fascinating story behind paintings by Apache, Navajo, Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo artists.

Personal, firsthand accounts of the world in which the artists lived and worked heighten our appreciation of the paintings and give us insights into these Southwestern native cultures. In particular, many traditional ceremonies recorded by the artists are described in order to build a broader understanding of their religion and way of life.

The paintings in the book were created between 1920 and 1958 and are part of the William and Leslie Van Ness Denman Collection, which is now owned by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the U. S. Department of the Interior.

The Denman Collection encompases a wide range of subject matter concerned with the spiritual content of Indian art, reflecting Mrs. Denman’s special interest in the universality of mythic and legendary themes in world folklore.  

How the Book Began

When Hopi artist Fred Kabotie was reminiscing about his friendship with William and Leslie Van Ness Denman during a visit with my family in the late 1970s, he mentioned some of the paintings the Denmans had bought from him over the years.  Fred’s teenage grandson, Fred Lomayesva, was sitting nearby, and on hearing mention of the paintings he snapped to attention and started asking questions: What paintings? When did you do them? Why? What are they about?

As his grandfather described from memory some of the paintings, young Fred listened with fascination.  He said he wished he could see the paintings. He wanted to learn the stories about all of them. Wasn’t there some way to make them available so that he and other young people could enjoy them?  It would mean so much to them to see the paintings and hear the stories.

That incident helped spark the idea for this project