Lot 46: An Emmi Whitehorse triptych, "Earth Signs," 1985

Emmi Whitehorse
Navajo, (b. 1957), "Earth Signs," three works, 7/85, mixed media on paper, mounted on canvas, each signed lower right.sizes 32in x 48in and 28in x 40in (2)

"Touch is all important to Emmi Whitehorse's unique style. She uses her hands to smear, caress, and fine-tune the dry washes of her grounds. The actual drawing process is equally intuitive... Viewers can choose -as we adjust our eyesight, our depth of field, to Whitehorse's intricate cyphers- whether to read these signs of nature as either very near ('myopic,' she calls it) or very far away. Either way, the tangles of marks amount to a secret cache, a secret code" (Lippard, Lucy R., "All the Way Home," 2006, essay for Whitehorse exhibition, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art).