Duane Slick

In narrative traditions, to tell the story of tragedy, one must always begin by telling the ending first.

I once believed that the weight of such expectations functioned as a cultural given for the artist of Native American descent. Its rules stated that we cry for a vision and place ourselves in a single grand narrative of history and representation. . . .

But the laughter of Coyote saturated and filled our daily lives. It echoed through the lecture halls of histories and it was so powerful and it was so distracting that I forgot my place in linear time and now I work from an untraceable present. -Duane Slick

Duane Slick has been making ethereal paintings in shades of white for almost two decades. His quiet, contemplative compositions are built up with layers of acrylic paint, allowing shadowlike images to emerge from remarkably smooth, matte surfaces. A Native American (Meskwaki Nation of Iowa on his father’s side; Ho-Chunk Nation on the Nebraska-Iowa border on his mother’s), Slick makes art that reflects his personal experiences, his profound devotion to the natural world, and a penchant for storytelling. Oration at Dawn features the artist’s self-portrait in profile, overlaid with silhouetted flowers and foliage.