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Peyote Breakfast II / Ruthe Blalock Jones, born June 8, 1939, Native American; Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria (Artist)

Essay/Description

The title Peyote Breakfast perfectly describes the scene: the woman has completed a full night of prayer within the Native American Church and, as the sun rises, she will complete the service with a meal.

Seated atop a prayer blanket, the woman wears a high-collared polka-dot dress with a brooch clasped below the collar. Her face is adorned with red ocher paint, and her German-silver earrings have an Oklahoma scissortail bird design. She is covered by a fully fringed red and blue shawl. Her hands are folded, and one clasps a blue macaw-feather fan with a single red macaw feather in the center. The prayer blankets around her are wrinkled and in disarray from a long night of prayer service. Abundant foods are laid out in four large bowls, with a water bucket and ladle placed at the end of the spread. A haze of smoke wafts from an unseen fireplace, coiling and snaking upward to the opening of the tipi above. In the background five poles support the tipi structure.

Ruthe Blalock Jones is an artist, cultural practitioner, and Indigenous scholar from the Delaware, Shawnee, and Peoria Nations. From 1979 to 2011, she was an educator of Indigenous art at Bacone College (Muskogee, Oklahoma). She has worked in a range of media throughout her artistic career, including painting and printmaking.

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2021

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Title(s): 
Peyote Breakfast II
Creator(s): 
Ruthe Blalock Jones, born June 8, 1939, Native American; Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria (Artist)
Culture: 
Native American; Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria
Date: 
circa 1980
Materials/Techniques: 
gouache on board
Classification: 
Object Type: 
Accession No: 
02.1969
Previous Number(s): 
TL1999.7.3; 0227.1969; 45410
Department: 
Not On View

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