Original Painting “Water Maiden of the Corn” [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 and a non-Indian man, raised in Albuquerque away from pueblo events, she nevertheless drew on her Native culture but 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 is traditional in presentation as she is shown wearing a traditional pueblo dress and yet she is superimposed on a background that is abstract and next to a corn plant that is architectural in presentation.  The painting appears to have been executed with brush, atomizer, and architectural-type drawing instruments. 

The female carries a gourd that is supposedly filled with water for the corn plant.  Her hair is up on one side and tied with a chonga-style bun and hangs down on the other side, reminiscent of the Hopi Warrior woman Hé.é.e, whose mother was putting up her hair when they saw the enemy approaching and the daughter snatched up a bow, quiver and arrows from the wall and raced toward the village to warn the people and she defended the village until the men could come from the fields.  Perhaps Hardin's intent was to express the importance of the female as more than one whose purpose is domestic. 

Condition: original condition

Provenance:  from the Phillips estate of Colorado

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