What the Portrait Tells You

Kevin Red Star was born on the Crow Reservation in Lodge Grass, Montana. Born into an artistic family-his father was a musician and his mother is a skilled artist- Red Star’s creativity was nurtured throughout his childhood. Red Star grew up sketching and copying works by western artists like Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. At age 19, he was selected to study at the newly created Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As one of only 150 students selected from around the country, Red Star worked closely with a faculty that included several distinguished artists, and was exposed to a wide variety of art forms. He formed a tight circle of American Indian artist friends who encouraged and challenged each other. Red Star later returned to the school as the Institute’s first artist-in-residence.

Red Star continued his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he began to push the traditional boundaries of the surface of a painting. Even as his style evolved, Red Star stuck with subjects associated with the late 19th century life of his people, using images, designs, and even colors that are specifically Crow. Today his home and studio are in Red Lodge, Montana.

"I was taught the old ways, the traditional way to paint with oils, on canvas, the color wheel—that’s my training. I use the knowledge that I acquired through my schooling and my museum visits all over the world, and I take all of that into my studio and put something on the canvas. And in my case, I break a lot of rules. Rules that are standard, that you cannot deviate from. I tell students, 'you have to be knowledgeable. You have to know what you’re breaking before you break it.'" —Kevin Red Star

This is an image of a Crow woman posed in a time and location that are not entirely clear. While Red Star’s work refers to specific people from the past and present, the names, clothing, and settings of a figure may come from different sources. Red Star looks at lots of old photographs, uses names of people mentioned in historic documents, and is also inspired by living people. He attends Crow ceremonies and feasts, where he photographs people and their personal items, then uses these images in his work. He also uses Crow names to inspire his images. “I get the names off the historic tribal enrollment roles [sic]. I have ideas how a certain portrait or situation would fit them,” says Red Star. Though Red Star’s work is inspired by his native tribe, his portraits often differ from historical American Indian portraits. He describes the clothing styles of his subjects as authentic, though at times exaggerated. He paints his figures with a heavy outline, and uses paint splatters to draw attention to the surface of the painting. Red Star’s figures are often distorted in some way—in this portrait the woman’s hands are particularly large when compared with the rest of her body.