• 36" X 48"

• Acrylic

• Stretched Canvas

• Unframed

This is an original painting of a famous Native American by Dickie Motherwell. He was a Lakota Sioux who lived a life full of great responsibility, overwhelming sacrifice and amazing accomplishment. In this portrait, he has a broken nose that really moves your eye across the canvas and through his face quickly. His eyes are warm but they have seen a lot of pain. His heart was pure which gave him the strength to be the unbeatable Military General and Battle Strategist that he was. This powerful warrior was the one who beat Custer at "Little Big Horn" in the Black Hills. This warrior had powerful dreams throughout his life which gave him direction and spiritual guidance. In one of these dreams he was told that he would always be assured victory if he did not to wear any colorful feathers or adornments on his head. For this reason he always let his hair hang loose or in long traditional braids.

His personal life was a steep and difficult path. He had fallen in love with a young squaw but her family forced her to marry the son of the chief. She never stopped loving him and, as their culture allows after a number of years, left her husband to be with him. The tribe was very angry, not because of this arrangement, but because they thought that she would be too much of a distraction from his duty of protecting them. So they forced her to go back to her husband and in the end the husband shot him in his left cheek. He lay in a coma for three months and then got up and started moving around again. They never removed the bullet. He never really got over that emotional loss even though he did marry again. Instead he led his people to victory which restored pride in their broken culture and fading traditions.