Poundmaker making waves with signature style

He may be relatively new to the world of art but Dallas Poundmaker is quickly making his presence known on the Canadian art scene.

"I've seen a lot of artists in my time but I've never seen one that caught on like Dallas did," said Arnold Isbister, an artist and author who has been a mentor to Poundmaker. "He paints fast. He doesn't analyze anything. It just comes to him and he just paints it."

Native Nouveau is the title of Poundmaker's solo art exhibit at the Wanuskewin Heritage Park Art Gallery in Saskatoon. The exhibit, Poundmaker's second at Wanuskewin, opened at the beginning of April and runs until May 14.

"He's making these great paintings and he's selling them quite easily. Obviously people want his stuff," said Isbister.

Poundmaker is a 27-year-old Native artist from Moosomin. He said that it was through his involvement in Saskatoon Community Youth Arts Programming (SCYAP) that he developed his desire to become an artist.

"I knew I had talent, I just didn't go on with it. I guess I needed that push from Arnold," said Poundmaker.

SCYAP Inc. is a not-for-profit organization designed to address the social, educational, and economic needs of youth who are faced with employment challenges. The SCYAP Art Centre offers many programs designed to offer at-risk youth opportunities to access training in the areas of art and culture.

"A lot of them were from the streets and they had problems like alcohol, drugs or whatever," said Isbister, a former arts leader with the program. "In Dallas' case it was alcohol and an overpowering case of shyness."

Poundmaker graduated from the program in August 2004 and a couple months later he had a number of his pieces featured in a solo exhibit at Wanuskewin.

The SCYAP program is designed to help enhance the youth's confidence and self-esteem, "Which it did of course for Poundmaker," Isbister said. "He was just amazing to watch, especially as he progressed."

The program runs for eight hours a day, five days a week for eight months. "That would be equivalent to probably two-and-a-half years of university," said Isbister. "It's an in-depth and inclusive course."

Students in the program are paid minimum wage for their participation. They do activities for the city, for example painting traffic boxes, and they give small art workshops in schools.

The program begins with an introduction to drawing with various tools such as charcoal and pencil and then moves on to coloured pencils and pastels. The next section of the program focuses on colour, combining colour with watercolours.

"From there, after we determine that they've reached a certain level, we go into painting," said Isbister.

The potential artists then learn about colour theory. Once they grasped this concept, they move on to painting still lifes. As soon as they are comfortable with what they have learned so far, the students reproduce works by the masters like Van Gogh, Picasso and Monet. Towards the end of the program, the students are given some leeway to create their own painting. "That's where Dallas' art kind of blossomed," Isbister said.

"I call his art Native Nouveau because it's like the art nouveau of the early 20th century and art deco but yet it's combined with his culture and his stylistic Native painting. His work has the strong lines, strong colours, flowing lines and that's what comes naturally to him. I don't see anyone else doing what he's doing, not in the Native communities anyway. I strongly advise him to keep this style, just kind of add to it as you go along but keep the style because it's his, his signature."

Poundmaker said he's interested in eventually obtaining his bachelor of fine arts degree.
"I would like to study in Calgary, Santa Fe, New Mexico or Saskatoon," he said.