“Light, colors, and spirit—that’s what I paint. You have to show the spirit in the painting, because the spirit lives forever. A painting should be an investment, and it should move you, and move you, and move you. . . . That’s why I do impressionistic landscapes—I am painting the spirit of a picture, not a picture of a picture.”¹
—Brummett Echohawk

Landscape by Brummett Echohawk (Pawnee) captures the movement, vitality, and color of the Oklahoma prairie. Here, Echohawk’s attention to detail extends to individual plants and grasses, with purple bursts of wild bergamot, yellow dots of slender gaillardia, and protruding brown shoots of Indian grass animating the landscape beneath a blue sky and billowing clouds.

Landscape is thought to depict the Twin Mounds formation,² located north of the Cimarron River and partially owned by the Pawnee Nation. At eighty-two feet, Twin Mounds is the highest peak in Payne County.

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

This text was developed from an interview with author and attorney Walter Echohawk, nephew of Brummett Echohawk, by Jordan Poorman Cocker, June 21, 2021

_____________________________
¹ Youngbull, Brummett Echohawk: Pawnee Thunderbird and Artist, 99.
² Walter Echohawk, interview by Jordan Poorman Cocker, June 21, 2021, Oklahoma.