Luanne Redeye

Luanne Redeye. “Karlene”, 2012. Gouache on Arches Paper. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The School of Advanced Research is pleased to welcome Seneca painter and beadworker Luanne Redeye as the 2017 Barbara and Eric Dobkin Native Artist Fellow. An accomplished figurative artist and also a new mother, Redeye portrays members of family and friends, an intersection of autobiography and community. It is the representation of Native peoples from a Native perspective that is important to her.

Redeye comments:

I depict my Native culture and the relationship between perception and experience through genre scenes and portraits of people from my home reservation in New York. The images I choose to paint often have a strong personal and emotional component because of the relationship I have to the subject. I intentionally leave out “Indian” signifiers. There’s no visual cue for the viewers to categorize the people in the paintings. This forces the viewer to search further for the paintings meaning to ask “why this image, why this person or these people”.

While at SAR, Redeye intends to complete a series of five paintings and corresponding beadwork frames. While the paintings will represent family members, the larger theme of the work, will explore alcoholism, domestic violence, abuse, and mental illness but also good things like caring, providing, protecting and teaching- themes that have affected her family and her directly but also each generation since the start of colonialism. Through access to the IARC art collection and time to experiment in the studio, Redeye expects her work to flourish with new interpretations and understanding of images and art making. She writes, “The shape of my work could change to become something more than I imagined.”

Raised on the reservation by her grandmother in New York, Redeye followed her desire for an education to get off the reservation and move west. During college and grad school, she found a supportive system of mentors who shared their knowledge and skills. Now she has become a teacher and a mother and shares that foundation in art she received with new students. The Dobkin Fellowship will allow her to focus on painting, away from the necessary demands home and classes as she continues to make a name for herself as a Seneca woman and artist. Redeye will be in residence at SAR from March 1-May 31, 2017.