Over a career spanning 30 years, painter Duane Slick has consistently pursued a vision to integrate secular Modernist abstraction with the beliefs and traditions of his Native American heritage. “Duane Slick: The Coyote Makes the Sunset Better” will be the artist”™s first solo museum exhibition, bringing together more than 90 paintings, prints, photographs and video, all made within the last five years. They will be on view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, Jan. 17 to May 8. The selected works include the artist”™s ongoing series that reference the coyote as a seminal figure in indigenous culture, as well as paintings that reflect both the landscape of Slick”™s upbringing in Iowa and the symbology and beliefs of his heritage as a citizen of both the Meskwaki (Fox of Iowa) and Ho-Chunk (Nebraska) Nations.
As a child, Slick was told by his parents to be circumspect when speaking of his culture to others, as European civilization had taken so much from Native peoples since its conquest of the Americas. Slick found a way to speak through pictures.
The visage of the coyote in the artist”™s work exemplifies the coyote”™s role in the mythology and folklore of indigenous people throughout North America.
Since 2005, Slick has been professor of painting and printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. He received a BFA degree from the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Cedar Falls, Iowa, and an MFA from the University of California-Davis.
