Lynne Allen

They were as numerous as grass
Lithograph and Woodcut
560mm x 560mm
2002 / 2004

All the matriarchs in my family have been members of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota. All were sent away to government boarding schools, to realign their cultural heritage. All became outsiders in both the native and the white world. Everybody comes to their own cultural truths, and mine is that I am the product of the government’s plan to educate the Indian. I can trace my Native heritage back six generations to Ita Ta Win (Wind Woman), born in the 1830s. I have the writings of my great grand mother, photographs and native beadwork, my mother’s baby moccasins, yet I am a white woman.

At some point an artist needs to ask what is at stake in their work. I am like most writers; I combine personal experiences with fiction. As a visual artist I incorporate the passions that drive me personally into a bigger reality. The history of my art making has referenced the homeless, prisoners, police, hyenas, unsavoury characters that pose a threat or danger, lead fishing sinkers that look like bullets, fish hooks, references to small pox, floating feet, facts and myths about how the West was won, porcupine quills, and squashed and rusted beer caps. All of these are linked.

As a Tamarind trained Master printer I will forever be in love with lithography. It is what comes most natural to me and by combining it with other forms of printmaking I have been able to expand the richness of the print in my work.

Artist website