This is a drawing by David Griffin,  Native American Indian artist. 

The drawing combines many aspects of Native American life.

David Griffin ( Native American b. 1968)

Signed and dated "07" lower right.

Overall:  10 15/16" x  4 3/16"

One side has deckeled edge. Some slight rippling. Otherwise sound estate condition.

Dave Griffin is an Artist and a Wariorr - in head, in hand, in heart, in spirit. Born into the conflict that was Vietnam, he came of age on the battlefields of the Middle East as a decorated and combat wounded Airborne Ranger - a Veteran of Desert Storm.

The cross-cultural conflicts of East and West surrounding his Baptism by enemy fire in many ways mirror his stateside multi-cultural heritage. His mother - a full-blooded Sioux, and his father - of direct Irish lineage, were cast in their coming of age as participants in the World War II era industrial milieu that was Old Chicago - where stockyards, Great Lakes shipping and Captains of Industry created simultaneously a melting pot and a cultural mosaic for over a million refugees of the Great Depression.

Like so many of the broad Native American diaspora, Dave was raised with a solid footing in both realms and a mind that traveled between them in a vastness of complexities.

Spending his youth in the shadow of the mountain forests of Kentucky, he set off alone for days at a time tracking and hunting - incorporating the material trophies of his game into knife handles and jewelry for himself, his family and friends at a time when many of his classmates were discovering MTV.

He answered a call to arms - out of a sense of adventure, the lure of the far and wide and of duty to his country for which he had developed an intense patriotism. He turned to sketching as he entered a military culture requiring traveling lightly and offering little time for his fine craft talents. What came to him as inspiration, more intensely as he was taken farther and farther from home, were visions - usually as dreams - juxtaposing the traditional motifs of Native American cultures he was shown both by his mother and in his rural schooling - in harmony with motifs of intensely personal significance. Although after rejoining the American workforce he returned to his craft productions and began incorporating color and larger format into his works on paper; the present work of modest scale and subtle monochromatic tonality is perhaps most representative of the artist's dualities - namely a Native American vision expressed in a format he embraced out of necessity from Boot Camp, Ranger School and Special Forces training to Kuwait and Iraq and on to a series of VA hospitals tending to two bullet wounds and a torrent of shrapnel that earned him two Purple Hearts and a Distinguished Service Cross among other honors and Army recognitions.

Today Griffin's studio is as it was in his youth - nature, unbridled as one is likely to encounter it today, presently in a State Forest east of Biloxi - itself yet another dichotomy of Deep South and Gulf Coast - with our Man of the Past and Present at its epicenter.

Note: Mr. Griffin's jewelry has been acquired by both Native American collectors and the studio jewelry cognoscenti while his paintings have been exhibited from galleries on Michigan's Upper Peninsula to South Florida.

SHIPPING: Shipped in rigid cardboard flatpak.  Sorry, we do not ship rolled.  Shipping in continental U. S.: $ 7.00 packing & handling plus actual on-line postal calculation 1 pound. We can combine like sized items closing within 48 hours of each other for $2.00 + 1 lb. added to the above.