Carolÿnne Whitefeather is an American Artist using innovative Printmaking techniques combined with her unique visual language and storytelling centered on the cultures of the First Peoples of the Americas.
Carolÿnne Whitefeather is an American Artist of innovative Printmaking with new visual language and storytelling centering on cultures of the First Peoples of the Americas and its beginning in the Southeast Moundbuilders where Contemporary Fine Art references nature, culture and understandings in the intangible and tangible material cultures in focused suites and singular works of art as individual and collaborative creative expression.
Diversity in her artwork inspired by First Peoples from ancient times to the present is achieved through her pioneering, sustainable printmaking process.
Carolynne Whitefeather absorbed many of the narratives she heard from elders as she was growing up immersed by the clear rivers winding through the dense forests of North Florida. She also was privileged to work with early archeological explorations that unearthed representative material culture of the older peoples. Her expressive art references the culture of the First People; it also reflects the oral traditions she heard as she grew up surrounded by Seminole elders who had long inherited the heritage engrained in the land they adopted more than two centuries earlier. Images of birds, animals, and humans representing the stories and beliefs are translated and transferred to paper, often in abstract form cleverly combine the tangible with the intangible.
Carolÿnne Whitefeather has successfully interpreted the oral and visual heritage in which she grew up into a contemporary art practice. Whitefeather's "Art of The Apalachee of the Southeast" is a singular collection of artworks that visually bring to life more recent connections with sophisticated long-ago occupants of Ocmulgee, Etowah, Moundville, Spiro, and Cahokia.Through her creative vision, graphic images that had much earlier been set in clay, copper, and shell are skillfully transformed onto the printed page. Printmaking is the perfect medium, according to Whitefeather, to bring to life the aurally rich narratives that flourished before. Using inks that she specially engineers, she most effectively employs the art of transferring highly original visual expressions to paper surfaces to express lessons learned in her youth.
Carolynne Whitefeather’s innovative and personalized artwork is informed by both the
storytelling absorbed early in her life and her immersion into the natural world brought to life in those narratives. Diversity in her artwork inspired by First Peoples from ancient times to the present is achieved through her pioneering, sustainable printmaking process. Her studio practice captures the life, beliefs, and natural surroundings of First Peoples whether
indigenous to the American Southeast (today’s Florida, specifically), the Hawaiian Islands, and the impenetrable mountains of Albania. Under her creative eye, the tangible and the
intangible, drawn from narratives based on ancient sources, are transformed into dynamic
abstractive images. Uniting all of Whitefeather’s work is her lifelong commitment to honestly represent the lives and values of First Peoples through artistic expression.
Whitefeather’s unique works of art are found in public and private collections through the
United States and Europe. This includes the corporate offices of the inks she manipulated in
order to develop her sustainable practice, Golden Artist Colors, Inc., New Berlin NY and Hunt- Speedball Corp., Philadelphia PA. Museums in which her work is found include the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; The State of Florida, Bureau of Historic Preservation; The University of Oklahoma School of Art Permanent Print Collection; Maui Arts and Cultural Center; the USSD Art in Embassies Program; The National Gallery of Art, Tirana, Albania; the Central State Archives, Tirana, Albania; and Butrint National Park/Ministry of Culture, Albania.