Paul Surber painting of Loti-kee-yah-tede, a Laguna woman

Loti-kee-yah-tede, a Laguna woman who often posed in that same fringed costume and jewelry for photographer Carleton Moon is a Paul Surber acrylic painting on a board  in an ornate gold frame from one of those photographs. Loti-kee-yah-tede, was the chief’s daughter of the Laguna Pueblo, when she was photographed wearing Ka-waik clothing with a belt and beaded necklaces by Carl Moon in about 1905. The Laguna Pueblo is located in the semi-arid lands west-central New Mexico, near Albuquerque. From 1905-1906, Moon had a short-lived partnership in Albuquerque with businessman Thomas F. Keleher, called the Moon-Keleher Studio. After the partnership dissolved, Moon continued working, photographing carefully selected Indian “subjects” in a romantic, posed style. His photographs began appearing in magazines and he exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in New York. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Moon to exhibit his Native American photographs at the White House.

Paul Surber was born in Redlands California in 1942. He is known for paintings of Native Americans and landscapes in oil, acrylic, and gouache. Much of his life has been spent living close to the sources of his inspiration, the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico.As a child, Paul would spend his days roaming a local museum admiring the exhibits. When he was five years old, he attended a parade featuring traditional tribal clothing and was inspired by the colors and textures.He was mentored by a German artist who taught him the discipline of painting from a good monochrome, a method Paul has used throughout his career. In order to develop his compositions, he would travel along areas where tribes historically traversed and photograph the landscapes he painted. Later on in his career, his subject matter transitioned into portraiture more so than landscape. In all of his work, Paul’s discipline was to paint with knowledge and understanding of the different tribes and people he was representing.