The Original Dolona Roberts Web Site

    As fervently as 20th century artists have marched ahead, they have searched the past in an attempt to find the roots of art. European masters of modernism such as Picasso and Matisse found inspiration in the beauty and primal authority of African art. In a firm though less heralded connection, the short-lived but influential movement known as Indian Space Painting, a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism, explored and expanded upon the art of Northwest Coast tribes. Jackson Pollock's early work shows a kinship with the methods and forms of Navajo sand painting, which some suggest is linked to the development of his drip technique. Kenneth Noland has acknowledged the relationship between Navajo weaving designs and his striped paintings of the 1960s.

All of which puts New Mexico artist Dolona Roberts in excellent company. Roberts, a native of Santa Fe, is widely regarded for her unique and immediately recognizable canvases based on Southwest Indian motifs. For thirty years she has been refining and expanding her vision, moving increasingly toward abstraction and concern for color but always maintaining a firm foundation in the Indian ethos and the spirit that underlies it.

Tablita, acrylic on canvas, 56 by 28 inches.

Corn Dance, acrylic on paper I 36 by 30 inches.

Roberts' signature works are her large (often slightly larger than life-size) acrylics of blanketed Indian
women. In paintings such as Patterns 11, the stripes, diamonds and zigzags of the blanket serve as structure upon which she exercises her considerable skills as an expressionist. Threads of red and orange run across the mauve field, creating a mood of excitement and immediacy.

  In Roberts' work, the Indian presence is heightened by her realistic rendering of the woman's head and the hint of a profile. Presenting the figure from the rear makes several symbolic points. In ritual dances, the women rarely expose their faces. Sometimes they are turned down, sometimes obscured by evergreens or baskets held before them. On another level, the artist-like the viewer of the painting-observes the dancer from a respectful distance, yet both artist and viewer are swept up in the animistic spirit of the event.

  The artist tends to work in long series, and over the years her subjects have included blanketed male dancers, women with baskets, and landscapes. Recently she has turned to tablitas, the brightly painted wooden headdresses worn by women in various Hopi and Rio Grande Pueblo corn dances, as the vehicle for her abstract expressions. Earlier works in the series, such as 1ablita, are anchored by Roberts' clear representation of the dancer herself. As it progresses in paintings like Corn Dance, the realism begins to melt, as if the artist were gradually immersing herself in both the spiritual reality of the dance and its embodiment in color and gesture. In Tablita Vision II she takes another step toward pure abstraction, a "separate" reality in which color and form speak their own clear tongue, a reality that approaches that of the original creators of the tablitas themselves.

Roberts' quest of such a vision began in the 1950s at the University of New Mexico where she studied with Elaine de Kooning, one of the early abstract expressionists. Another teacher was the great draftsman of the Taos school, Kenneth Adams. She once complained to Adams that drawing nudes was boring. "Well, then it's up to you to do something creative with them," Adams told her. "Make them un-boring." De Kooning, Roberts says, "encouraged us to splash and drip. Each teacher contributed so much

Tablita Vision /I, acrylic on paper, 44 by 30 inches.

that has been valuable in my f I had a good balance of both structure and freedom when I was a student."
One factor in the incorporation of Native American motifs into her own contemporary work was seeing an exhibition of the Indian Space Painting group (Will Barnet, Ruth Lewin, Howard Daum, Robert Smith, and others) in the 1940s. The group sought to combine the ideals of European modernism with an indigenous American style, to create, as Barnet said, "a real, a true American painting." Roberts had always attended the ceremonials at pueblos near Santa Fe and Taos and may have been most influenced by her own Native American heritage-her great-grandmother was a full. blooded Cherokee.

Dolona Roberts is widely regarded for her unique and immediately recognizable canvases based on Southwest Indian motifs.

A few years ago, Roberts left Santa Fe and moved to Silver City in the southern part of the state. "Santa Fe isn't the same place anymore," she says ruefully. "1 grew up there, and seeing the drastic changes. .. There's a stillness in Silver City, a quiet intensity of color. When I first got here, I thought about doing some landscapes, but the "Tablita Vision" series began, and it just had to be painted."
  Roberts' process is as intuitive and organic as her subject. As she describes it: "I go into the studio and look at the blank canvas for a long time, until images start appearing in my mind. I play music, jazz or classical. I start with an under painting, usually liquid dyes, a multitude of colors running together . Mter that, I like to let the painting paint itself. To do that, I have to be in a particular state of mind, a state of grace or high meditation. I have to be in tune with the
.." painting.

Like the Indian dancers she paints, the artist is transfigured, and her work serves as a record of the experience. -S.M.P. .