Tony Abeyta
“I consider myself an urban indian and a traditionally inspired Navajo at the same time. The progressive world which globalizes around us becomes an exciting place to contribute my art into. As I create from a Native American vocabulary, I am reminded that this world changes and reinvents itself and therefore so should I. Within the context of painting I leave no stone unturned. I try to experiment with images both personal and universal.”
Tony Abeyta is a Navajo contemporary artist working in mixed media paintings. He is a graduate from New York University with an honorary doctorate from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He was the 2012 recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Excellence in the Arts award, and recognized as a Native treasure by the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. Tony currently works in both Santa Fe, NM and Berkeley, CA. His work is included in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Boston Fine Arts Museum, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, New Mexico Fine Arts Museum, the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, CA, and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, as well as in many other public & private collections.
Abeyta’s primary focus has been on painting the emotional experience one finds in the New Mexico landscape .
“There exists a rhythm in the land where I was born. I spend a lot of time deciphering the light, the cascades of mesas into canyons, the marriage between earth and sky and the light as it constantly changes at whim, the intensity of rock formations, and the sage and chamisa that accent this poetic experience, unlike any where else I have seen. I am beckoned to remember it and then to paint it.”
