Quincy Tahoma

Quincy Tahoma was born near Tuba City, Arizona on Christmas Day 1921] Tahoma means "Water Edge.'

As a young boy he became familiar with many religious and traditional chants and rituals. He also was known for creating "sand paintings." As a boy he spent much of his time hunting and fishing, whereas later in life, he drew much of his artistic inspiration from his boyhood experiences. Tahoma studied art in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1936 to 1940, where he attended the Santa Fe Indian School. Early in his career, his paintings were serene and soothing in tone, but increasingly they had subject matter of bloody wars and men killing animals. In retrospect, Tahoma's subjects were traditional Indian pursuits such as riding, fishing, and hunting, and he also painted distinctive landscape scenes.

He was known for his brilliant colors and precise lines along with the two-dimensional disposition of his work reflected the nature of American Indian painting in the American Southwest at that time. Tahoma spent most of his life in Santa Fe, working on hundreds of paintings over two decades from the mid-1930s to 1956 as a Navajo painter and muralist.