CARL SWEEZY

– CARL SWEEZY (WATTAN) –

Arapaho, 1881-1953

One of the first American Indian professional artists, Carl Sweezy near Darlington on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation in Indian Territory. He was the son of Hinan Ba Seth (Big Man). The artist was educated in Mennonite mission schools at Darlington and at Halstead, Kansas, and attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma. He became interested in art at age fourteen when he received a box of watercolors as a gift from a teacher.

His subjects ranged from portraits of individuals to portrayals of everyday life to panoramic scenes of battles and ceremonials. With traditional culture as a primary subject matter, his paintings often portrayed in a wealth of detail documenting traditional culture and the transition to the accepted way of "American life." He also portrayed the ceremonies of the Native American Church in Oklahoma.

His painting style is traditional, yet he adds perspective and multiple-subject images that reference the western painting tradition. He painted in oil, watercolor, and sometimes even in house paint. His work is held by the Gilcrease Museum, the Philbrook Museum of Art, and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum, in Oklahoma, and by the Heard Museum in Phoenix and the Museum of the American Indian in New York. Carl Sweezy died on May 28, 1953.