Original Dine (Navajo) Painting of Two Resting Deer [SOLD]

Yazz was a keen observer of the animals on the reservation. He was able to take a visual snapshot of animal activities and then commit those images to paint and paper. The Navajo Reservation is a very large reservation and very sparsely populated, leaving much land for the animals to enjoy without interruption from man. In this painting, a pair of deer is resting at sunset.

Yazz has provided a very realistic presentation of the two deer and a more modernist, almost Asian, presentation of the vegetation. It is wispy and sparse as it dances around the remnants of a tree trunk stump. A lone blue bird flies overhead—a symbol often used by Yazz as his assigned last name, Toddy, is a corruption of the Navajo word for bluebird.

The painting is in original excellent condition. It probably dates to the 1960 decade.

Provenance: This painting is among a collection from the Balcomb family, formerly owners of an art gallery which they closed in 1976.