“Lady in the Corn Field” signed Tsa-sah-wee-eh [SOLD]

It has been observed that when Helen Hardin was involved in a painting, she was totally involved until that painting was completed.  Her life was dedicated to her work as she retreated into the spirituality of what she was doing.  Born of a Santa Clara Pueblo woman, Pablita Velarde, and a non-Indian man, raised in Albuquerque away from pueblo events, she nevertheless drew on her Native culture.  She had no patience to follow the two-dimensional painting style of the Santa Fe Indian School to which so many other artists were following.

Hardin's paintings sometimes ventured into Picasso-like abstraction and other times were more traditional in concept, if abstract in presentation.  This painting of a pueblo woman in the corn field, as Helen appropriately named the painting, is serene, abstract, traditional pueblo and modern, all in one.  Helen devoted many hours of effort to place parallel lines on the woman’s clothing, dots on various areas of the painting, circles, ovals, curved lines throughout in her determined effort to produce only the finest and not the fastest.

This is an excellent example of Helen’s finest work.  It is framed in the manner of most of her paintings.  In her hand writing on the cardboard that was on the back is Lady in the Corn Field” Acrylic by Helen S. Hardin Tsa-sah-wee-eh (and her spruce logo) and the price $65.00.  The cardboard has been removed from the back of the painting and the part with Helen’s writing has been placed in a pocket on the back of the painting.

Condition: original condition

Recommended Reading:  Changing Woman: The Life and Art of Helen Hardin by Jay Scott

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Albuquerque