Oral history interview with Robby McMurtry

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is January 6, 2011, and I'm interviewing Robby McMurtry for the Oklahoma Native Artist Project sponsored by Oklahoma Oral History Program at OSU. We're here at Robby's home in Morris. Robby, you're a storyteller who creates colorful characters in painting and print, also an educator. You were born in Loco, Oklahoma, which is a real place although it sounds like it comes straight out of a story. What was it like growing up there?

McMurtry: Actually I was born in San Antonio, Texas, but I grew up in Loco, Oklahoma. That's the first place I remember. Loco, Oklahoma was a very rural area--it had a tiny school. The school was so tiny we had to go to school somewhere else. (Laughter) Loco was where we got our mail and did our shopping and everything. It is still exists. There's maybe two hundred people there, but it was as rural as you can get in Oklahoma, probably. Mostly ranches--that was 1:00the main economy around there. Ranching and a little farming. Not much farming, because it was too dry.

Little Thunder: Is that what your father did for a living? Was he a rancher?

McMurtry: My father tried to be a farmer or a rancher. He kind of played at it, but mainly he was a veteran of the Army. He was in the service for a long time. We, periodically, over about twelve or fourteen years, would move away from Loco to some Army base in California or Germany or anywhere, and move back to Loco, and then go somewhere else again.

Little Thunder: What about your grandparents? Where they close by, or did they play a role in your life?

McMurtry: My mother's parents were close by, and they were hardscrabble farmers. They tried to farm whatever they could. I loved my grandparents, but going to 2:00visit them was always work. (Laughs) They always were growing gardens and fixing fence and stuff. (Laughs) But I liked to go and listen to them talk at night. They both told stories about how they came to Oklahoma as children. That was really interesting to me. My other grandmother lived in Duncan. That's my father's mother [on my Comanche side]. She was a very strange, spooky old woman that we would go to see. She was a little bit scary to me, but really interesting because when she would talk I would listen, too. Unfortunately, she passed away when I was, I think, nine, and left me $33 dollars.

Little Thunder: That was probably a good sum for her. What kinds of art 3:00experiences did you have in school?

McMurtry: Very little. There was no art at the school, actually, where I went to school, public school. Which was Velma/Alma. There was no real art program. Occasionally, I'd see an artist who would do a show in Duncan or somewhere like that. Really, as far as I knew, when I was a kid, I was the only artist around. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Did you think of yourself as an artist as a child?

McMurtry: Yeah. That's all I really thought I could do. That was my thing. I wasn't big enough to play football. We lived too far from town to do any activities, anyway. It was twenty miles. I rode on a school bus an hour every morning and every afternoon. I did a lot of drawing on the school bus! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Did you have access to materials?

McMurtry: Yeah, I could always scrounge paper and pencil. That was the main 4:00thing. When I got a little older at school, I discovered typing paper without lines, and that was great for drawing. I did gravitate to another guy, a Cherokee guy, who went to our school. He became like my best friend. He was the only other artist that was around. We would work on each other's drawings and go camping together. He was my buddy.

Little Thunder: Did cartoons play a role in your interest in art?

McMurtry: They did. I was a comic book aficionado when I was a kid. At the army bases we had no T.V. most the time, even when we were in Loco. So, entertainment was the radio or the funny papers or comic books, if I could get them. I could only get comic books in Duncan, and that was a forty minute trip from the house. 5:00So, comic books to me--I would read them over and over and just look at the stories. At the same time I was doing this, I was listening to older people talk about stories, things that would happen. I would imagine the pictures as they were telling these stories. I would imagine the things that they were telling me in a comic book. It seemed like the same kind of stories. I learned to draw from comic books more than anything else. Some friends showed me different things, and I found a couple of books when I was in high school. But basically, I taught myself just by looking and copying other people.

Little Thunder: What was your first exposure to Indian culture?

McMurtry: Indian culture around Loco--it's the edge of Comanche country, so 6:00there were some Comanches living there. But they were rodeo people, they really weren't pow-wow people. There were other tribes, too. Choctaws, because it's Choctaw and Chickasaw country also. I knew there were pow-wows because they had those in Comanche and Duncan, different places. But I really wasn't aware that there was an Indian culture, per se, until I got away from the house, until I got out and saw it. (Laughs) There were a lot of people around but there wasn't like a community of certain groups.

Little Thunder: And because your access to art was limited, you probably didn't see much Indian art?

McMurtry: No. Occasionally there would be something in Duncan or Comanche. An artist would have a show at a drugstore or trading post, and I'd go see that if I could get over there. I remember when I was in high school, some of the banks 7:00had Indian art shows and those seemed really classy. That was where I first started seeing a lot of different styles of Indian art, specifically.

Little Thunder: Were you interested in that as a subject matter?

McMurtry: Oh yeah, yeah. It seemed like stuff that had happened right there where I was living. When I would ride the school bus, I remember I would look out--the other kids would be talking and playing and laughing, but

I'd be watching the country, just imagining what was going on out there in the field or on that prairie. Over there under that mountain, off in the distance. There was a mountain called Hat Top Mountain that could be seen for thirty miles. I guess it can still be seen. (Laughter) Just imagining people in that landscape doing things, living. Doing cattle drives, or buffalo hunts--

Little Thunder: You went to college in Chickasha. What did you major in?

McMurtry: I tried to major in art but I flunked out as an art major. Because, although [my teacher] was a wonderful artist and he could do really interesting stuff, I just couldn't discipline myself to spend a semester painting a couple of still lifes. The first still life I did turned out to not have the proper things in it. It was a package of cigarettes and some other things. That all sounds real passé--that's the kind of stuff you see in still lifes now. I got bad grades in art. I was flunking out as an art major, getting D's and F's. I know a lot of it was my fault, because I didn't want to do that stuff.

I loved figure drawing. I got really good grades in figure drawing but every other class I just bombed. My friend up there was a poet named Lance Henson. He said, "Man, get your degree in English." (Laughter) He was working on his degree at the same time, and I thought, "Well, okay, we could go to class together." (Laughter) And as I got into it, I found, "Well, I could use this to learn how to write stories, these stories I've been wanting to tell. I've been wanting to paint them and now I can write them and tell about them. So it started all coming together. I was painting, I painted after I graduated. Well, during college, even, I started painting and selling a few pieces.

Little Thunder: Were they Indian paintings?

McMurtry: Mostly, yeah. A lot of western stuff, too. I did that for a number of years. But I've always wanted to do something like comic books. Tell stories 10:00graphically, which my paintings really are if you look at them. They tell like mini-stories, little tiny episodes. But I wanted a longer narrative, something more epic, I guess. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Lance is a Cheyenne poet. I think he is part of the reason why a play you had co-written with Linda Poolaw ended up being produced in Tulsa.

McMurtry: Yes, when I was in college there in Chickasha, that was when I really first discovered an Indian community. Fortunately or unfortunately, they were mostly Kiowas. (Laughter) We had an Indian club and we'd put on pow-wows and stuff. Linda Poolaw was in English class with me and the assignment was to write 11:00a play. It was Playwriting class. He was going to show us the form, so we decided to collaborate on the idea. She would come to my house in the evening or I would go to her house and we would write or not. (Laughter) Basically, the story was called, I can't remember what the story was. What was it called?

Little Thunder: The name of the play was "Skins."

McMurtry: Skins, right. Yeah. It was about some local Indian guys trying to go to college. It was performed at the college [in Chickasha], several performances. Then it traveled to Anadarko and Lawton. A couple years later, it was made it into another production in Tulsa. Didn't get very good reviews. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: It was one of the first Native plays in Tulsa. Were you selling your artwork when you were in college, too?

McMurtry: A little bit, yeah. Anadarko was right there, close by. And there were several gift shops and trading posts. They were real trading posts in those days. I'm not trying to sound like I'm really an old guy. But there were real trading posts around that had been there for fifty or sixty years. A lot of pawn shops, too. There used to be a lot of pawn shops. I don't know if there still are or not.

Little Thunder: What were some of the competitive shows you did early on?

McMurtry: Just local art shows like Duncan. I showed at Indian Fair [in 13:00Anadarko] a few times. Later on, when I met some other artists who were older and more professional, I started going to art shows with them. I went with Leonard Riddles to a lot of places. Leonard and Doc and I all went together sometimes to Tulsa and different places around the state. I think we went down to Texas once or twice.

Little Thunder: How did you meet Leonard? He was a pretty important Indian artist.

McMurtry: Leonard is a very distant relative--I'm not sure exactly how--but my dad told me about him. He lived at Walters, which was a good hour and a half away from Duncan. Leonard came to church in Duncan, so I met him over there. He 14:00started inviting me down to his house. He lived way out on the bald, unmarked prairie. It was so easy to get lost out there. There were no land marks, whatsoever. None.

Little Thunder: Did you show him your work?

McMurtry: Yeah.

Little Thunder: Do you think he influenced you in anyway?

McMurtry: Oh, a lot. Leonard loved to tell stories. He would sit up all night long, until two or three a.m., and just tell stories and things that he heard. He was just a font [of information] because he'd started gathering stuff too, when he was a kid. Started drawing when he was a teenager. And he'd talked to the old, old people.

Little Thunder: A lot of cultural information.

McMurtry: Right. He knew a lot of--I want to say arc[ane] knowledge about 15:00Comanches, things that nobody else knows about, probably. There were some things he wouldn't talk about at all, but I knew he knew about them. He just wouldn't say. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: How did you end up in the Stillwater area? After Chickasha?

McMurtry: I had a girlfriend up there. I started going up there. Once I got up there, I found out there were a bunch of people that I knew from Loco and Chickasha and Anadarko. So, I just started hanging out in Stillwater some. And I knew Ben Harjo there.

Little Thunder: There was a little artists' community?

McMurtry: Yeah, and right after I graduated from college, my friend, Jon West, 16:00said, "Come to Tulsa." I said, "Okay." (Laughter) So, when I got up there to stay with him, he said, "I'm going back to college. Do you want my job?" He was the janitor at the Tulsa Indian Youth Council and I was broke. I said, "Okay." I took his job and [ended up] working down there. After a while, the people I was working with, they'd seen my drawings laying around and things, and they started asking me to work in the youth program, which was arts and culture. So, I was given a job at the Indian Youth Council.

Little Thunder: That was your first art teaching experience, I guess.

McMurtry: Yeah, it really was. Well, in college I had done some volunteer work at places like Hog Creek and Fort Cobb with a group of kids. Just for one or two 17:00evenings. But up there it became a real job, and I enjoyed it. Of course, I was also doing other things. Driving a bus. Ben was working there. He was the cultural director, but he also ended up being the maintenance man and mechanic and everything. It was a real small staff. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So did you and Ben get hooked up with the Art Market about the same time?

McMurtry: Yes, Ben had met [Linda Greever]. She called me and told me to come down. This was after we both lost our jobs [at Tulsa Indian Youth Council]. I had invited Ben to be in a show with me, a two-man show at a little gallery.

Little Thunder: Do you remember the name?

McMurtry: I'm sorry. Then shortly after that, we both lost our jobs for the same 18:00reasons, basically. I won't go into that. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: What year?

McMurtry: 1976, I'm thinking. I think it was the same year I got married. And he had met people in the Art Market, and he invited me to come down and meet them. That's how I met Linda Greever. At the time, her Art Market was more or less art to put over your couch. Stuff to match your furniture. It was a lot of Eastern and European things. No local flavor stuff at all, just a completely generic gallery. It could have been anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

Little Thunder: Because she'd inherited that body of work.

McMurtry: I didn't realize that.

Little Thunder: So, the Indian artists that she handled really influenced [its direction.]

McMurtry: Ben was the first one she handled. I think Ben really kind of turned her on to that.

Little Thunder: How did you meet Lesa, [your wife]?

McMurtry: I was a counselor at Tulsa Indian Youth Council. I was doing classes and counseling kids, and she came in with Annette Arkeketa, a girl I was working with, who did a lot of things around the Youth Council. They went to school together. They came in one day, and I said, "Oh my God, who's that?"

Little Thunder: So, you met your wife in Tulsa. (Laughter)

McMurtry: But strangely, my wife had just moved up here from Duncan. We didn't 20:00know each other there, but we knew some people there very well. We knew some of the same people.

Little Thunder: A large vein of your work has focused around period representations of cowboys and Indians from the '50s. Did you settle on the subject pretty early on in your career? Or did it evolve gradually? My son called [you] the Pepsi Cola guy because you used to do the old fashioned signs. (Laughter)

McMurtry: I don't know. I guess that was a little bit of Andy Warhol stuff that came to me when I was in college. (Laughter) I don't know. But that's the icons that I remember as child from the '50s and '60s.

Little Thunder: Doc Tate Nevaquaya, who was another Comanche artist, gave you the name Aquasuu.

McMurtry: Aqaquasuu. I spelled it wrong.

Little Thunder: You signed your painting[s] that way for a little awhile. Can you explain how that came about?

McMurtry: I was having dinner at Doc's house one evening. I think it was dinner. Anyway, we were sitting at the table and he just started calling me that. It means "Red Shirt." I had on a red shirt. He knew my name but he just kept calling me that. Caught his eye or something. (Laughter) I kind of liked it, so I started putting it on my paintings for a while. Then people started calling me that, too, the people that knew what it meant. Of course, to most people, it would be meaningless, it's just a jawbreaker. (Laughter) I could say it means 22:00anything and who would know except a Comanche?

Little Thunder: Is that why you dropped it eventually?

McMurtry: Yeah, it was kind of [an] identity thing. People didn't recognize me and it was hard to sign my checks, Aqaquasuu. (Laughter).

Little Thunder: How did Doc influence you as an artist, either in terms of business or style?

McMurtry: Doc talked about business a lot. He told me on more than one occasion, "Robby, if you're going to be an artist you've got to have a gimmick." Right away I saw, "Well, he's a flute player." And he was an excellent flute player. May have been a better flute player than he was an artist. I thought, "Well, that's pretty neat." I think that's really when I started using the logos, the Coca-Cola.

Little Thunder: Something that would make you stand out?

McMurtry: Yes, something that would cut me out from the rest of the herd a little bit. Plus, I was doing more contemporary stuff and almost nobody was doing that. It was scenes from 1850 or something like that.

Little Thunder: Had you seen T.C. Cannon's work?

McMurtry: I had not.

Little Thunder: Or [Harry Fonseca], the guy who does the coyotes?

McMurtry: Yeah, I know who you're talking about. I had not. But when I saw T.C. Cannon's work I just--I blossomed when I saw that because he had even more ideas.

Little Thunder: When you first started showing along with Ben and other artists in some of the Indian art galleries, how was your work received? What was the landscape like?

McMurtry: At that time there were a lot of local--they called them trade fairs. They were being done by a lot of local municipalities. That was the art scene in those days. It was pretty busy. You could go to one every month, even more in the summer time.

Little Thunder: Were they in the [town] square?

McMurtry: Usually. Sometimes they'd be in a shopping center. They were starting to build some malls, then. That's when malls starting to be built. And they were 25:00in the new malls. That was one of the big things for the new malls. You could drive to Oklahoma City and Tulsa and go to big ones. There were small ones, too, in Duncan and Lawton, Comanche. Different places.

Little Thunder: Were you making enough money to get by?

McMurtry: Yeah, it was a big help. It really was. I was still a student. When the gallery scene started, the trade fairs just kind of went away, I guess. Maybe they still do them. There are only a few big ones now, really huge ones. Red Earth and different things like that.

Little Thunder: When did you begin teaching at Morris?

McMurtry: After I left Tulsa Indian Youth Council, I went to work for Cherokee 26:00Nation as an Artist-in-Residence. Actually, it was through the State Arts Council. They were doing half the funding and sending artists to different sites. I was sent to the Cherokee Nation. Tribal politics being what they are, I came back from vacation one summer and my whole department had been dismembered, or however you want to say it.

Little Thunder: How long had you been there?

McMurtry: Two years. So the Arts Council said, "Well, if you want to go to Morris you can check it out." So, I came down here and looked at it. It seemed like a nice community. It's very small, not a whole lot bigger than Loco. I was an Artist- in-Residence here and when that ended, I was hired as the Cultural 27:00Coordinator through the Creek Nation to take care of the cultural aspects.

Little Thunder: For [their] Indian education [program].

McMurtry: Which is kind of strange, because I didn't speak any Creek. I didn't particularly know their history, but what I've learned. I've really studied it. It's been a lot of fun. Probably eighty percent of the kids here are Creek and a smattering of every other tribe, too. My best student this year is a Kiowa kid. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How have your experiences teaching informed your art?

McMurtry: Well, I like to tell stories in my art and the kids pick up on that. Younger people have a hard time with a lot of what we call "fine art" because it 28:00just doesn't speak to them. A lot of stuff that they see in museums and art books, it's as far removed from anything they know, as it can be. "Why do we have to learn this crap? (Laughs) What's this all about? What's so great about the Mona Lesa?" I understand that the Mona Lesa is great, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that I think the education community is a little bit snobby about stuff like that. Kids can learn more about that when they go into college, if they're interested in it. It's just pretty much useless at the public school level, I think. There are a few kids who get it, but most of them don't. And don't want to.

Little Thunder: Has it helped, bringing your own things into the school room?

McMurtry: Oh yeah. Mainly, I think, because the kids see I know what I'm talking 29:00about. If you're an art teacher, and the kids don't even know if you can draw or throw a pot or anything, why should they listen to you? (Laughter) You're just going to give them assignments in books and show them how to do weavings and things. But I draw. And that's one thing that I get a little trouble about from the public school. I'm expected to do a lot of stuff. I can't weave, I can't throw a pot--I can do a little bit of braiding. Mostly, I draw. That's all we do. If you can find what a kid is interested in drawing, that's what's going to hook them.

Little Thunder: When did you first try your hand at writing and illustrating 30:00your own stories?

McMurtry: Gosh, in first grade. (Laughter) I swear. I remember my teacher, my first grade teacher, she made a big deal out of it. Because I would turn all my worksheets over, all my coloring sheets, or whatever, I would turn them over and I would divide the paper into four pictures. And I would draw little--

Little Thunder: Comic book panels?

McMurtry: Right. At the time, I was doing Zorro. (Laughter) She called my mom to come visit with her about it and everything.

Little Thunder: So she saw it? Was she upset?

McMurtry: No, no. She thought it was great. She encouraged me to do more of it. And then we moved again. [Gesture]

Little Thunder: [You] lost a mentor. In 2003, I think, you published "Song of Moon Pony." Can you explain what that book is about and how you got the idea for it?

McMurtry: Song of Moon Pony was a story I got from Leonard Riddles, the basic story. I edited it somewhat--

Little Thunder: A traditional Comanche story.

McMurtry: Right. Leonard had written several books already. He had them typed and everything. Even had mimeographed copies made of them. None of them were on the computer. I often wondered what had happened to all that stuff because he had a lot of it that he compiled himself. He was writing at least one book, I know. But it was never published. He told me that story--one of many--and years 32:00later, I decided that would make a good children's book. I thought it was a beautiful story. Even before I did it as a children's book, I'd been telling it as a story to my kids and grandkids, and school kids for years.

Little Thunder: There are so many things they can relate to. Like not feeling attractive, or like they'll never get the girl, or guy, they're interested in.

McMurtry: I think so. It's a real story about real people.

Little Thunder: What role has Lesa played in helping you juggle your teaching and artistic career?

McMurtry: Lesa has been very supportive. She really has. She doesn't go with me to art shows anymore because it's just so exhausting. I don't even go to art shows much anymore if I can get out of it. I'd rather stay home and do my art. Lesa and I eloped and ran away about three days after she graduated from high 33:00school and she's been with me ever since. Making a place for me to do what I do. She's supporting me right now. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You've been exhibiting and lecturing abroad for a number of years in places like Luxemburg, Portugal, Austria. How has that impacted your work?

McMurtry: Lance Henson, my friend from college called me one time and asked me if I would be interested in something. It had nothing to do with art. He asked me if I would be interested in lecturing in Luxemburg and a trip to Europe, and I said, "Sure." I had never really lectured before, except kids. Went and did 34:00it. And when I was there, I started seeing the European art scene, and the European art scene is comic books. It's graphic novels. (Laughter) They've developed it. When you go into a person's home, where some people in this country have shelves of books, they have shelves of graphic novels. That adults read. (Laughter) They're great stories. Their best writers, their best story tellers and their best artists work on them. In America, comic books are still for kids.

Little Thunder: Looked down on?

McMurtry: I have to hide my comic books. People make fun of me. But that's where I first decided I really wanted to get back to that. That's what I always wanted to do, I just put it aside. I wanted to do graphic novels and comics, and tell 35:00stories about Oklahoma. About the place I know, where I grew up. The people or the descendants of the people I know.

Little Thunder: You did a sculpture of [a] stickball player--

McMurtry: Seven stickball players.

Little Thunder: For Chattanooga, Tennessee.

McMurtry: That was a story, also. I got with a group called Gadugi. We formed a group with some Cherokee artists, and we did a project in Chattanooga, Tennessee on the river. I designed and built and installed seven stickball players who were coming down from the Pleiades, which is a Cherokee story--that they originated in the Pleiades. There were seven stickball players coming down. The 36:00entire thing is, I think, a hundred and eighty feet long. The stickball players are about twelve, fourteen feet high.

Little Thunder: Did you know what Bill [Glass] was doing? Did each of the artists know what the other artists were contributing and work together at some point?

McMurtry: A little bit. But the exhibits themselves are separate. You see mine as you are coming down the river or going off the overpass. You can see it from a mile away easily. Bill's is around the corner as the plaza goes up into the town and past a waterfall. It's really a beautiful site. It covers about five acres, I think, right on the Tennessee River. And steamboats come down and look at it every day. People downtown can walk down into it if they want to. It's part of the National Park Service, so it's well maintained.

Little Thunder: I hope I get to see it at some point.

McMurtry: There's a young fellow over near Locust Grove named Roy Boney who's a good graphic novelist. I've met him a couple times. As far as I know, there is nobody else doing stuff about Oklahoma, per se, or about the region. There were some books done by a guy named Jack Jackson down in Texas a few years ago. They were more or less focused on Texas history. He did one about Quanah Parker. He did one about the Alamo, the Texas Rangers, different things. I think that's kind of where I'm headed with my books right now, doing some of the stories of Oklahoma. But I'm trying to find stories--I'm definitely not going to do one about Will Rogers. (Laughter) Okay? Just get that out of your head. (Laughter) 38:00But I want to find some people, do some books about people. And I'm trying to research them, trying to make them as accurate as I can. The problem with Oklahoma [is] being Indian Territory, there were no newspapers. So, records are sparse. When they exist, they're usually federal or tribal. And tribal records are mostly lost. Federal records are difficult to find. They may be filed somewhere in the Smithsonian. I'm wanting to do stories about people of Oklahoma [that] people have heard about but they don't know what they do. "Who was Jesse Chisholm?" "Oh yeah, the Chisholm Trail." That's all they know about him. And Jesse Chisholm never dealt cattle. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: He was an Indian guy, too. (Laughter)

McMurtry: Yeah, he was an Indian. Ned Christie, everybody's heard of him, but 39:00exactly what did he do and what happened? Why was he an outlaw?

Little Thunder: I want to pick up on that in a bit. In 1990, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act was passed and it required that artists provide proof of enrollment or be certified by their tribe. Do you remember how that impacted galleries and artists?

McMurtry: It was kind of a strange scene for a while. There was some anger and resentment and jealousy. A lot of emotions came into play at that time, and nobody was exempt from it.

Little Thunder: In other words, no matter how long you'd been identifying as Indian or doing Indian art. . .

McMurtry: It didn't really impact at all until the galleries decided they needed 40:00to make sure they were compliant with the law. Now most of the exhibits and shows are specifically compliant with the law. They may not mention it anymore, but they try to be that. At that time, because we were not enrolled, my dad and I went to the Comanche Business Committee and got a letter that more or less certified me, I guess. It's never been tested in court, but it's sufficed for when I've needed it a couple of times. People don't like to talk about it. Nobody likes to talk about and dwell on it. It makes everybody uncomfortable.

Little Thunder: Yet it's an important part of the conditions for producing Indian art.

McMurtry: Yeah, and as you said, a lot of Indians resent the law because nobody else has to prove that they're black or that they're white or that they are Irish. What does it mean? It's supposed to be a protection, but at the same time, it's a burden

Little Thunder: What's your primary medium when you paint?

McMurtry: Acrylic. But I'm no longer a painter. I've pretty much decided I'm not painting anymore. I'm doing my graphic novels. That's what I am doing. I'll do a painting or a colored picture for the covers. Something that's interesting that might be in the future--graphic novels can be done in full color. As paintings. I saw a lot of that kind of thing when I was in Europe. Each panel was a small 42:00piece of artwork that was painted. And that's a possibility.

Little Thunder: When was the last painting that you did?

McMurtry: Actually, I'm working on one for my wife right now. (Laughter) It's a belated Christmas present.

Little Thunder: Those are the best kind. Thinking in terms of your paintings for a minute--we'll come back to your graphic novels--how do you think your style [has] changed over the years? Your style and your use of colors?

McMurtry: When I first started painting--and all artists do this, I see it all the time--I was trying to paint exactly like somebody whose work I admired. And it was different people at different times. I tried to paint like Leonard Riddles for a while. I tried to paint like Rance Hood for a long time, but I discovered that nobody but Rance Hood could paint Rance Hood. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Was that an inspiration for some of your action painting? The galloping horses?

McMurtry: Yeah. I did a show in New York of some of my big, bright action pictures at one time. The reviewer in the review kept accusing me of copying Fredric Remington's style. (Laughter) No, no! I am trying to copy someone else. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Do you work from photographs?

McMurtry: I work from photographs, yes. When I'm painting, I do that a lot. I do some paintings specifically to look like a photograph, a painted photographic image. I have a very good friend, Sam DeVenney--he's not the official tribal 44:00historian [for the Comanches], but he's the one everyone goes to when they want to know something visually because he has recorded and been collecting photographs of Comanches for forty or fifty years.

Little Thunder: So you have access to some of those photographs?

McMurtry: Right. He's a genealogist, too, so he knows who everybody in every photograph is, and how they're related to each other. He's also a linguist. Whenever you hear Comanche spoken in a Hollywood production, you can be pretty sure that Sam coached them.

Little Thunder: You've always done a lot of pen-and-ink drawings. What do you 45:00like about that medium?

McMurtry: The pen and inks? It seems to serve my purpose as a storytelling medium. It's quick. I can do a lot of gestures and movement in it, seems like. It's more free than painting. I don't know. I can sit down with pencil, rough it out, go back with a pen and refine it somewhat, and catch what I'm trying to put down without spending a whole lot of time on it.

Little Thunder: What's your creative process from the inception? How [do] you get ideas?

McMurtry: Well, I like spending a lot of time outdoors, playing, if you want to 46:00know. I have horses. I like to put a saddle on the horse and go for a ride and pretend that I'm Pistol Pete or Ned Christie or Jesse Chisholm. Or somebody a long time ago riding across the reservation, going to see his girlfriend. Anything to get me out of this technological world that we're all so caught up in. Everybody. Me, too. I mean, it's smothering me, sometimes. And I know it smothers everybody else, even if they don't know it. I hope when I draw a picture of some people sleeping out on the ground or around a campfire or tending their horses, that it looks like I know what I am talking about. I 47:00didn't get this from a book. You know what I'm saying?

Little Thunder: Your artist bio, I love that you have in there that you were raised by coyotes.

McMurtry: That's not strictly true. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Coyote was, for a period, a dominate motif in your work.

McMurtry: He still is. He shows up in some of my books. You have to look for him sometimes. He's hidden in the background a little bit.

Little Thunder: What do you find intriguing about them?

McMurtry: Coyotes, I have known them since I was a little kid. I remember, when I couldn't even talk yet, coyotes were there. I would see them crossing the road or out in the pasture. Saw dead coyotes hung on the fence post. I don't know, I've always thought, coyote is just everybody else. He is just trying to get by.

Little Thunder: A survivor?

McMurtry: Right.

Little Thunder: Another aspect of your work is the way it expresses sexuality, in a kind of an exaggerated DC Comic way. Especially your Indian women characters. I was wondering if you ever caught any flack about that initially?

McMurtry: Once or twice, so believe it or not, I toned it down. (Laughter) It was a lot more in your face. And my women--all the women that I do are pretty sensual. There was an artist named Frank Frazetta, whose work I really admired. He was a comic strip artist, but he was a great anatomist. And his women and his men are not thin, they're husky and voluptuous.

I was offered a job about three or four years ago with a comic book company out of California. It wasn't until I had talked to them more about it, that it turned out to be a pornographic line of graphic novels they wanted me to draw for. But I turned it down because I would have ended up in therapy or something, probably.

Little Thunder: I think we kind of touched on this but maybe you can expand a little. Your paintings have a narrative thread. Are you always conscious of picking up a particular moment out of a chain of events?

McMurtry: Yeah, it's just like a snap shot. I imagine what happened before and 50:00what happens after. That's how my books go, too. When I'm doing a book, I get an idea or I'll hear about a character and I just know one snippet of information about him, so I start to research him as much as I can. Interview people and go to places where he went. I try to do that. If I know where something happened, I want to go there and see the place and walk around on it.

Little Thunder: I remember seeing a lot of night scenes in your paintings that I always thought were striking. Are there any special challenges in those?

McMurtry: I like to do the dramatic moonlight, the highlights and stuff. I really admire that kind of thing in N.C. Wyeth's work and some of the older 51:00illustrators. Very dramatic contrasts. I like to go riding at night, especially if the moon is full or almost full. It's just a magical time. I see things that, later, that I don't know if I really saw or not, but I saw! (Laughs)

Little Thunder: As someone who's a practicing artist, when you find students that say they want to become professional artists, how do you guide them? What 52:00do you tell them?

McMurtry: I tell my students over and over, the ones who want to listen, "If you want to be an artist, just do art. And don't throw your drawings away because you don't like them. Keep everything that you do so you can look at it and see what you feel like you did wrong. And you'll improve if you just keep doing it. Everyone has different natural abilities, but everybody can develop somewhat." I don't think I had any natural ability at drawing, really, but I think I wanted to do it so much. I knew people in high school who could draw better than I could. I felt like they were much better drawers. But they didn't keep doing it, they didn't develop it.

Little Thunder: One of your most recent graphic novels is based on Ned Christie. 53:00I wonder if you could explain who Ned Christie is and why you got interested in his story.

McMurtry: Ned Christie was a Cherokee guy from near Stillwell, a place called Rabbit Trap, which is a little town that's still there. He was accused of killing a deputy marshal in 1887, I think it was. Thereafter, he was a fugitive for five years, although he really was not on the run. He just went home and held off United States Marshals and reward seekers who came to get him. For five years. Built a little castle on a hill over there. I believe it's been pretty well established now that he was an innocent man. He kept telling people he was 54:00innocent--he didn't do it. I think it's been pretty well proven now that he didn't do what he was accused of doing. But he was one of those guys that went to town, got drunk one night, bad stuff happened. And he was around.

Little Thunder: What kind of reception has the book had so far?

McMurtry: The book was real well received by the family. The family loved it. In fact, I was invited to the Christie family reunion this past summer. It was a lot of fun. It was a hog fry. It was right there in the vicinity where the entire Ned Christie story took place. It was half a mile from where all the shootouts were. All the shootouts were at Ned Christie's house because that's where all the lawmen went. You can see the place from where the event was. The 55:00book is just now getting out into some of the Cherokee places of business because everything the Cherokees sell has to be vetted. Some historian has to go through it and make sure it's on the mark and accurate. And that just happened this past summer.

Little Thunder: Sounds like one of the challenges of doing graphic novels has been marketing, just getting it out there.

McMurtry: It is. It's totally different from marketing individual pieces of art at an art show. It's trying to find retailers and so forth, because the more books I move, the more money I make.

Little Thunder: Do you think it's harder to get publicity for a graphic novel that has an Indian hero?

McMurtry: A little bit, yes. I've had a couple reviews from online people, 56:00though, that have helped, that have Indian sites or Native American sites. But I've had really good reception in libraries. Whenever I've done a library lecture or signing, that's when I get the best response. Bookstores, not so much. People don't even come to them, really. I'm just looking for new markets, new ways to get it out. I would love to do one that would be used in public schools to teach Oklahoma history. Oklahoma history, right now, is possibly the most boring subject you can take in a public school in Oklahoma. (Laughter) Tell the stories of our Native people. Or the federal marshals, or the cowboys. Don't 57:00do the Oklahoma musical. (Laughter) Although, there's nothing wrong with that. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That would make history so accessible--

McMurtry: Yeah, it would. I remember when I was a kid--this was even when I was in preschool--there was a book you could get in all the Texaco stations around the country called Texas History Movies. It was these very little simple stories. Do you remember them? They were very, very simple, but they told some Oklahoma, but mostly Texas, history, comic- book style. And anybody could read them. Told stories of what happened, made it interesting. Gave dialogue to the characters that were there. It was racist as it could be, but it was a good 58:00storytelling medium. (Laughter) It was entertaining, informative.

Little Thunder: How do you balance your teaching and your artwork or work on your graphic novels at this point? Do you have like a daily or weekly creative routine?

McMurtry: I teach in the daytime. Then I come home, unwind and go up to my studio and try to work. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Do you try to work each night a little bit?

McMurtry: Yeah. I keep getting caught up in--I just finished illustrating a coffee table book. I did eighty illustrations for a book about the cattle trails from Oklahoma--from Texas to Montana. The author had worked on this thing for about eighteen years. I did all of the illustrations for it.

Little Thunder: That can be a good source of income can't it, illustrations?

McMurtry: Yeah, it can. And I'm doing some other things, too. I'm working on a Little People diorama in one of the casinos. I'm also illustrating a couple of children's books for other clients. But every chance I get, I'm working on my graphic novels. That's my aim, that's what I want to do. As soon as I can quit teaching I am going to do that a lot more.

Little Thunder: Looking back on your career, what is one of the pivotal moments that might have been sort of a fork-in-the-road moment, do you think?

McMurtry: I haven't recognized any forks if they've happened. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: It's all felt like it was supposed to go that way?

McMurtry: No, it didn't feel like that, either. (Laughter) It was--if I could see life as a road or trail, it just kind of meanders. I feel like I'm guiding myself a little bit, but it's probably all an illusion. I don't know what's happening to me. (Laughter) You know. A friend calls and says, "Why don't you move to this town?" or I meet somebody who gets me off on a different tangent after that. But I'm on this comic book tangent, this graphic novel thing for the rest of my life. I'm going to do this. This is the thing that people are going to remember me for, my Oklahoma stories that I've left. But I don't plan to leave anytime soon. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Up to this point, what's been one of the highlights?

McMurtry: My time at the Cherokee Nation, when I moved there from Tulsa. It was the first time I was ever in a community outside of Loco. I was in one in college for a while, and I was in Tulsa for a while, but when I moved to Tahlequah, it was almost like I'd come home in some way.

Little Thunder: Does Lesa have family down there, too, in Tahlequah?

McMurtry: No, her family's in Osage County. The time I spent there, I was able to do some--there's a writer over there that I became friends with. His name was Robert Conley. He actually wrote some comic strips that I did [drawings of] for the Cherokee newspaper while I was working there. Eventually, though, they got to be too abrasive and far out, so the newspaper wouldn't run them anymore. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Censored again.

McMurtry: Yeah. He was doing contemporary stories of Cherokees. Strangely enough, Indians, generally, I've found (make what you want of this) don't like to be portrayed in comic books. You know what I'm saying? Because of the stigma the comic books have. Comic books are still just for kids--

Little Thunder: [And] Stereotypes?

McMurtry: Stereotypes and all that. I have done a couple of underground Indian comics. Some Indians like them and some of them burned them, probably.

Little Thunder: You might be able to turn that around. What has been one of the low points for you?

McMurtry: Low points, geez. I lost my job here in Morris for a while, for about three years, because of federal funding.

Little Thunder: That's a big chunk of time.

McMurtry: Yeah. Lesa and I had bought a place already at this time. We thought we were going to lose it and it got very thin. We scrimped and did anything we could. I drove trucks for hay haulers. Just anything I could do for a while. We had a little girl at the time. Sadly, she kind of grew up poor. (Laughter) We've recovered since then. And all the other stresses that come with that. Personal relationships.

Little Thunder: Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to cover?

McMurtry: I don't know. Do you want me to tell a story? (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I actually do want you to tell stories about a couple of your paintings. Would you talk about this piece? [What's the title?]

McMurtry: I always put my titles on the back. (Laughs) This one is called "Pepsi-Cola Cowboy." It's one of a series I did using logos, Americana logos. Putting them in a Southwest regional type of look, because that's one of the things I remember as kid. You couldn't go into any store or gas station without seeing Coca-Cola and/or Pepsi-Cola and several other different drinks. They were just part of the landscape. They were painted on walls everywhere. My father was a sign painter and he did a lot of that kind of stuff. So, I saw it being created and then I looked at it for years and years afterward. And it's still there. That whole landscape is kind of a small-town look. And it's slowly fading, it's falling apart. The buildings are being demolished. And we have different logos now. But these are the ones that stick with me. You can call it commercialism, if you want to, but it's just a part of what made America what America is.

Little Thunder: And Western Oklahoma what it is.

McMurtry: When I was a kid, it really was not uncommon for people to ride their horses into town. Kids would ride horses to go see their friends. At rodeos, especially, you would see people dressed up like this guy. You still do see people. In those days it was less of a weekend activity and more of a general part of life, to live that way.

Little Thunder: What do you have here?

McMurtry: This is an illustration from a children's book that I was going to do. It was never published. It's a painting. I did a series of paintings for all the illustrations. This was a story called Brown Boy and Freckles. It

was their cross-country adventure one summer, one summer time, and the adventures they encountered.

Little Thunder: Being chased by a bull?

McMurtry: They went through the wrong pasture. They weren't supposed to go through that pasture. There was a bad bull in there. I gave the painting to my grandson because he really liked it.

Little Thunder: Is it still his painting?

McMurtry: It's still his painting, yes. He's kind of outgrown it, now. He's in college, so-- (Laughs)

Little Thunder: He'll be coming back to it. (Laughs) I guess this one has the title on the bottom.

McMurtry: Yes, this one was a piece I did as an invitation piece for a show called "Cowboy's Song." It was put on by a fellow named Austin Realrider in Pawnee several years ago. Austin had a gallery. He was also organizing some Wild West shows that were going on at the time. He wanted the whole show have real cowboy and Indian flavor. All he gave me was the title and told me to do a picture to go with it.

Little Thunder: Wild West shows. You mean performances outdoors?

McMurtry: Right. Austin lived near where Pawnee Bill had a Wild West show for years, back at the turn of the century. For a few years, Austin was promoting some of those shows. Newer shows that were kind of reproductions of Pawnee Bill, Buffalo Bill, that kind of thing.

Little Thunder: But run by Indians this time. (Laughter) Run by Austin, anyway.

McMurtry: Yes. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: This is one of your illustrations. Tell us what book it's from, but also, maybe, talk to us a bit about the process you use which is a little different from most graphic illustrators.

McMurtry: This is a work in progress. The working title of this one is "Medicine Lodge." And it's the story of Jesse Chisholm. This is my next graphic novel. It tells the story about this real person, because I've never had any real training as a graphic novelist. I'm kind of making up the process as I go along. I draw the drawings approximately three times as large as they're going to appear in the book itself. They're reduced. So far, all I have done is black and white. That's the medium I like to work in. I may go to some color later on, but right now this is what I want to do. They're fun to draw. I like the spontaneity of it. I can just more or less sit down with a pencil and start drawing and sketching things out. As soon as I get it more or less looking like I want it to, I take a black pen and start inking it.

Little Thunder: I wonder if you can read that to us? "Season in, season out. To track a critter is to know him, stepping in his very footprints."

McMurtry: Some of my pages are not actually dialogue. I use sort of a hybrid poetry as a narrative for some of the places where people are not talking. I want the characters to express themselves in dialogue, but there are certain events and time periods that can be better expressed with a kind of a flowing narrative that goes, more or less, with the picture. The picture and the words should show two sides of the same narrative. That's what I am trying to do.

Little Thunder: Give two different sets of information--

McMurtry: Right. I think a lot of that was influenced by Lance Henson, who is the poet that I've talked about. I really like his poetry. Lance and I are probably going to collaborate on some things. I've done illustrations for his books of poetry before. Those were black and white things, also. In fact, my first published work was with Lance. I did some illustrations in the college publication, back in the Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts in Chickasha.

Little Thunder: Do graphic novels require a lot of research?

McMurtry: They do. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You've said the kind of research you like to do is on-site?

McMurtry: Yes, I need to go to the places where all these things take place, if I possibly can, if I know where they are. I want to find out, what kind of clothes did they wear? What kind of house did they live in? So many of the westerns we grew up with as children were completely, totally inaccurate and unreal that people have a skewed idea of the way people lived. And I want to show the harshness of it, the dirtiness of it. You don't hear in the movies, or it's never really referred to, you were lucky if you got to take a bath once a month, probably. And you know anywhere there were a lot of horses, there was a lot of horse shit. And I want to try to convey that in my novels a little. The grittiness of it.

Little Thunder: [Well thank you for visiting with me today.]

------- End of interview -------