Original Earth Pigment Painting “Big Thunder” [SOLD]

“Big Thunder” is a sand painting from the Navajo Shooting Chant. Pablita Velarde occasionally depicted images from Navajo and Apache cultures, even though she was of pueblo origin.

Big Thunder emerged from the darkness of Father Sky. When he appeared, lightning filled the sky, air rushed to form his voice, and the rainbow filled him with colors. Water spouts appeared from his wings representing the tremendous quantities of torrential rains and floods which covered the world at the beginning of time. Thunder and lightning can appear in any direction, or at any time of the year.

Although Velarde worked with tempera, watercolor, and casein, she is best known for her earth paintings, which are similar to sand paintings. In preparation for earth paintings, Velarde first collected and ground stones into natural pigments. After grinding and regrinding them using a stone mano on a metate, she would sift the pigments into jars for storage.

Velarde would draw her designs on Masonite panels that were treated with a coat of pumice. She then used her ground-up minerals as paint to fill in the areas she had drawn. To mix her paints, she combined the pigment with water and glue, and then painted with paintbrushes. She would paint each color up to seven layers to gain the desired consistency. She then would outline the images, once again as many as seven or so times, to insure they were strong.

The painting is signed in lower right and the title is hand written in pencil on the back of the frame. The painting is still in the original frame.