Shield Medicine II Painting

Robert Orduno explores the conceptual precepts of the abstract expressionists - the intrinsic conviction that the canvas serves as an arena for a dance of spontaneity, and the act of painting is one of self-creation and revelation - his images evolve beyond representative form. They emerge from the original source into the figurative, energized by a spectacular and high-aesthetic mastery of color. The essence of his paintings are of pueblo Indian and plains Indian cosmology which is absorbed into the vast territory of collective mythology where the images integrate, surface and redefine themselves in ancient symbolism, petroglyphic visions, the rhythmic essence of ceremony, and in the magnetic power of dance. Orduno has been inspired by the visceral and provocative color palettes of Van Gogh and Gauguin, the leap of imagination favored by the surrealists, the prehistoric fascinations of Picasso, and the thematic visual dances of Pollack. "I relish the abstract, but like De Kooning, I am compelled to go back to the figurative." Orduno is of Spanish and Gabrieleno Indian heritage, a landless people directly related to the Nicolino or Chumash Indians, whose mother tongue is Shoshonean.