Pappan, known for his ledger drawings, continues the tradition of 19th- and early 20th-century Plains Indians who recorded battles, ceremonies and their personal narratives on paper taken from settler’s ledger books, the only paper available to them. National Casket is typical of his ledger art, “combining contemporary and historic material together to create something interesting,” he says. “A lot of Native artists don’t paint their own people. My work is about reconnecting directly to my family’s traditional culture of the Southern Plains.”
Chris Pappan (Kaw/Osage/Cheyenne River Sioux), National Casket, pencil graphite, ink and gold leaf on casket company receipt, 7 x 8 in.
His painting Epilogue recalls the history of Iⁿ‘zhúje‘waxóbe, or “Sacred Red Rock,” deposited by a glacier near the connecting point of the Shunganunga Creek and the Kansas River. It is a 28-ton red quartzite boulder sacred to the people of the Kaw Nation. In 1929, it was moved to Lawrence, Kansas, to celebrate the city’s 75th anniversary. A bronze plaque honoring the “pioneers” of Kansas was attached to it. In 2024, a lengthy rematriation process returned the rock to its original site bearing the scar left after the plaque was removed.
The background of the painting refers to the stone itself, and, Pappan explains, “a modern-day map of where the grandfather boulder used to live.” He places the matriarchal and nurturing Deer Woman in this contemporary context surrounded by healing branches of cedar. Her yoga pose, he explains, “is a statement of appropriation of another culture referring to the commonalities of world cultures.”
Jesse Littlebird (Laguna/Kewa Pueblo), Meditations on Fire No. 9, Vienna Sausage Memory, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in.
Jesse Littlebird (Laguna/Kewa Pueblo), Lightning People Dancing in the Valley No. 7, oil and acrylic on canvas, 28 x 68 in.
Jesse Littlebird’s painting Lightning People Dancing in the Valley No. 7 incorporates patterns inspired by pueblo pottery, recalling the potters’ going out in nature to meditate and returning to the pueblo to create designs. “Being a landscape painter,” he says, “I think about the ancestral people who were inspired by nature.” The painting is a culmination of a landscape series he describes as “cinematically panoramic.”
A recent series is Meditations on Fire, steeped, as well, in the history of his people, as well as the history of his father, Larry Littlebird, an artist, teacher and community leader who died last fall.
Chris Pappan (Kaw/Osage/Cheyenne River Sioux), Epilogue, acrylic and copper leap on wood panel, 48 x 24 in.
Commenting on Meditations on Fire No. 9 (Vienna Sausage Memory), he writes, “This painting unfolds as a broad color field of vermilion sky is pressing down with warmth, anchored by cool, Prussian blue grass. The flame is simple, suggested rather than described, leaning east with the wind. The land responds as if alive.
“The memory returns to me of a day trip with my family, when my father made a small fire and roasted Vienna sausages, recalling his youth near Paguate and his grandparents’ sheep camp. The painting honors a way of living where simplicity is not lack, but abundance.” —
Blue Rain Gallery
April 3-24, 2026
934 Main Avenue, Unit B, Durango, CO 81301
(970) 232-2033, www.blueraingallery.com
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