West Coast Native American Dancer Portrait

“Light Dancer II”

9″ x 12″ oil on canvas

©2011 Tahirih Goffic

This is a commissioned piece that I finished recently, for a lovely German couple I met this summer. They saw and purchased another painting of mine, Light Dancer, at the Eagle Lodge, and were eager to meet me and see more of my work. They wanted another painting, to accompany the one they had bought, and gave me pretty much free rein. That is the kind of commission I love! I was able to come up with my own idea, and only had to keep to a certain color scheme. They are happy with the finished product and so am I. I don’t really have a great name for it…any ideas?

October 3, 2011March 9, 2014 by Tahirih Goffic Categories: button blanket, haida art, haida dancer, haida head dress, native art, native dance, native masks, nuxalk, nuxalk dancer, west coast art, west coast native 1 Comment

the Thunder Dance

Thunder
12″ x 16″ oil on canvas

The color companion to my previous post for Kunamokst:
this is from the same reference photo, but I wanted to see what it would look like without the blue color restriction. I’m really happy with the results! I painted it in about 4 hours, right over the top of an old painting that didn’t work. No drawing, no prelim, nothing. The feeling of spontaneity and freedom was so liberating! I didn’t have to plan and I felt like there was nothing to lose, since it was on an old ruined canvas anyways…If I could only have that with every painting. I have been doing a lot of painting lately, but I’ve really been struggling. Nothing has been working for so long. I started turning towards photography to fulfill the creative buzz, since so many bad paintings were bringing me down. This success was exactly the confidence injection I needed!

November 19, 2009March 9, 2014 by Tahirih Goffic Categories: artistic confidence, daily painting, masks, native art, native dance, native masks, painting portraiture, west coast native Leave a comment