Smith, Jaune Quick-to-See, 1940-

<p>Born January 15, 1940 at the St. Ignatius Indian Mission on her reservation, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana. Smith received an Associate of Arts Degree at Olympic College in Bremerton Washington in 1960, a BA in Art Education from Framingham State College, Massachusetts in 1976, and an MA in Visual Arts from the University of New Mexico in 1980.

<p>Smith has been creating complex abstract paintings and prints since the 1970s. Combining appropriated imagery from commercial slogans and signage, art history and personal narratives, she forges an intimate visual language to convey her insistent socio-political commentary with astounding clout. Smith’s work carries tremendous weight and yet feels light and conversational—in large part due to this forged, personal lexicon of developed imagery. As critic Gerrit Henry, (Art in America, 2001) writes: “For all the primal nature of her origins, Smith adeptly takes on contemporary American society in her paintings, drawings and prints, looking at things Native and national through bifocals of the old and the new, the sacred and the profane, the divine and the witty.” For her ability to create and integrate her own visual language in her canvases, Smith produces multi-faceted work grounded in themes of personal and political identity.

<p>Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (born 1940) is a Native American visual artist and curator. She is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and is also of Métis and Shoshone descent.[1] She is also an art educator, art advocate, and political activist. She has been prolific in her long career, and her work draws from a Native worldview and comments on American Indian identity, histories of oppression, and environmental issues.

<p>In the mid-1970s, Smith gained prominence as a painter and printmaker,[2][3] and later she advanced her style and technique with collage, drawing, and mixed media. Her works have been widely exhibited and many are in the permanent collections of prominent art museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art,[11] the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and the Walker Art Center as well as the Smithsonian American Art Museum[12] and National Museum of Women in the Arts.[13] Her work has also been collected by New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe)[14] and Albuquerque Museum,[15] both located in a landscape that has continually served as one of her greatest sources of inspiration. In 2020 the National Gallery of Art announced it had bought her painting "I See Red: Target", which thus became the first painting on canvas by a Native American artist in the gallery.[2]

<p>Smith actively supports the Native arts community by organizing exhibitions and project collaborations, and she has also participated in national commissions for public works. She lives in Corrales, New Mexico, near the Rio Grande, with her family.