David E. Williams
| David Emmett Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Tos-que 20 August 1933 Lawton, Oklahoma |
| Died | November 1985 Cherokee, Oklahoma |
| Occupation | Native American painter |
| Years active | 1959–1980 |
David Williams (native name: Tos-que) (1933–1985) was a famous Native American painter of Kiowa-Tonkawa/Kiowa-Apache heritage from Oklahoma. He studied with Dick West at Bacone College and won numerous national awards for his paintings. He painted in the flat-style painting technique that was taught at Bacone from the 1940s-1960s.
David Emmett Williams (native name: Tos-que) was born 20 August 1933, in Lawton, Oklahoma to singer and leather-worker Emmett Williams (Tonkawa/Kiowa-Apache and his Kiowa wife, Jennie Sahkoodlequoie, who was descended of Sitting Bear. Census records confirm Williams was a full-blood, but show his father's heritage was Comanche.
Williams studied at the Indian Art Center in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, under Olle Nordmark and later at Bacone College with contemporary Native American painters, Joan Hill, Doc Tate Nevaquaya, and Bert Seabourn under Dick West, but did not become a serious painter until 1959. Prior to that, he performed as a traditlonal dancer and singer and worked in a shoe factory. He became serious and passionate about art in the early 1960s and worked in acrylic, gouache, pencil, prints and tempera. All of the artists of this period at Bacone were taught the flat-style painting technique, which was required for the Philbrook Museum of Art annual competitions. Philbrook and Bacone had an agreement in the 1940s–1960s period whereby student's work would be hung and offered for sale, with the school garnering one third of the profits of any sale. Williams participated in the annual competitions and was one of the Grand Award winners in the early 1960s. He also won, during the same time frame, the national competition held at the Bismarck National Indian Art Show in Bismarck, North Dakota.
In 1961, Williams married Norma Jean Eubanks and the couple moved to Los Angeles. Actor Vincent Price, who at the time was working as a Native American art expert, purchased 50 of William's paintings to sell through Sears Roebuck's Fine Arts Collection nationwide. William's first solo exhibit was at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, in 1964. That same year, he also did a two man show with sand painter, David Villasenor, at the Pasadena Public Library. He had other solo shows at the Southern Plains Indian Museum and Craft Center in Anadarko, Oklahoma, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Los Angeles and the Tryon Gallery in London.
...
Wikipedia