Oral history interview with Rance Hood

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is September 28, 2011, and I'm at Rance Hood's studio in Denison, Texas, where I'm interviewing Rance for the Oklahoma Native Artists Project sponsored by Oklahoma State University's Oral History Research Program. Rance, your action-based paintings have inspired a lot of imitators, but your art always continues to change and evolve. I think you say it best when you say you paint for the old people and to keep the old ways alive. Thank you for taking time out for this interview.

Hood: Thank you.

Little Thunder: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Hood: Well, I was born between Cache and Indiahoma, out in the farmlands. I was the only one that stayed with my grandparents. The rest of the kids went with my mother and my dad. I was the only one that stayed with my grandparents, so I'm 1:00the only one that can speak Comanche fluently. I used to come see my dad when he lived in Burkburnett, Texas. I got with some buddies, and we used to go bull riding, and I won a good one. I forget where this is, west of Wichita Falls. Everybody was proud of me because I won forty dollars and one belt buckle. I don't know where the money is or the belt buckle. (Laughter)

I went back to Lawton and went to see my brother in California. He got me a job and I worked there for about a year. I don't know. There was something in me--I 2:00didn't like California that much, so I came back to Oklahoma where the Indians were, where I could learn something. I didn't know what I was going to learn, but I came back. First of all, before my grandmother had died, I was trying to sketch things in the ground with a stick, and my grandmother said, "If you want to draw, why don't you draw tipis like this?" And she started making Xs. So that's kind of how I got started, I guess.

Little Thunder: She really kind of started you into Indian art.

Hood: Yes, and then when I went to California to see my brother, I seen a Woody Crumbo there and, "Damn," I thought. "Man, that's the best thing I've ever seen 3:00in my life!"

Little Thunder: Now, you hadn't seen any art in Lawton or Anadarko?

Hood: No, I hadn't seen no kind of Indian art, nowhere. I came back, and I started going through books in libraries, trying to find out about Indian art. Then I ran into a guy that became a good friend of mine. He said, "What have you been doing?" It was T. C. Cannon. So T. C. and I started running around together, and he was sketching and drawing. I said, "Damn, I want to do some of that," (Laughter) so we both started painting, kind of doing our own thing. He became T. C., the great T. C., whom I still love. The guy that taught us, that 4:00said, "Don't stop, and keep going because I envy you guys," was Lee Tsatoke. He was Kiowa. That's Monroe's son. What I done was--I didn't really stay with art that much. I was running around and doing this and that.

Little Thunder: So when you and T. C. felt like it, you'd drop in, and Lee would show you a few things?

Hood Yes, T. C. and I would go over there to his house, and he'd say, "Hey, do you guys know how to make snow?" We said, "No, you're our teacher. You're supposed to show us." So he got a toothbrush and put some paint on it and made snow. Man, me and T. C. looked at each other like, "This guy's good! He knows 5:00way more than we do." We just started painting. I ran into a guy in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I went through three or four galleries there, where they signed me up for like five years.

Little Thunder: Had Cannon gone to Institute yet?

Hood: No. See, I didn't know where T. C. was at the time, and I was on my own, but when I was there I thought, "I'm going to see where the best galleries are and try to get into the galleries." Then I got into some good galleries and got 6:00under contract, which I'll never do that again because I told them I didn't want to do a five-year contract. I wanted to do a two-year contract.

Little Thunder: To give them all your work for two years.

Hood: Yes, it was a "first rights to refusal," they called it. They checked it out and they said, "Okay." When I got home, I looked the contract over. They called it the daddy long legs of contracts. It had fifteen, sixteen pages to it. I looked at it, and I had signed a five-year contract. What I done was I done 7:00five for them, and that's what they really wanted: five. I done five for them, real quick-like, and then I done my own. But on my own, I kept that back, the real good ones that I thought was a lot better than the ones they took.

You get caught in situations like that. I know some guys that used to sing real good in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were under contract like this. The guy said, "Let me buy the contracts off you guys, and you guys will be big, big time." Because they'd just cut a record, which was really huge. What they done was, he bought their contract out from under them, and he wouldn't let them sing. That's no 8:00good, so I don't go under contracts no more. I've done learned my lesson on that. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: I want to go back just a little bit because you went to boarding school at Post Oak.

Hood: Yes, it was a small boarding school.

Little Thunder: Did you get any kind of art classes there at all?

Hood: No.

Little Thunder: Did you spend any time in public school at all?

Hood: I went to Cache School for probably a year. I went until the eighth grade. That's about all. Me and my buddies said, "Hell, we ain't learning nothing here. Let's go." It wasn't like now. You have to go to school now, but then, you didn't have to. If you was a young Indian kid, you could go down to the creek and play around all day long and ride horses and do everything you want to do, 9:00so that's what I done.

Little Thunder: You have this great feeling for horses that always shows through in your work. You talk about having horses yourself, you and your brother. Did you have them for a long time?

Hood: Yes. We had horses when we were young. My grandfather had horses, but his brother lived like half a mile across the road from us. We lived out in the country, so when we felt like riding horses we'd go over there and steal the old man's horses and ride them to town and ride them all over. They were kind of like our cars.

Little Thunder: Did you get scolded for that?

Hood: No, because the horses knew where they lived. If they threw one of us off, they'd just go on home. They didn't wait on us. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: When you got into the rodeo and you were riding bulls for a while, I guess, you really get to see horses in action when you're watching, when you're on top of the bull. I was wondering if you felt like that impacted your art work?Hood: Not really. What really impacted my artwork was, I think, maybe when I was young and we had horses. It's like my brother. He lived on them, my older brother. Now he's got two hip replacements. I said, "You rode too many horses. I told you to ride bulls with me." He said, "Huh-uh. I ain't touching no bulls, boy."

Little Thunder: This is Kenny?

Hood: Yes, this is Kenneth, yes.

Little Thunder: You have one sister, and you had at one point three brothers? 11:00How many of you were there?

Hood: There were seven of us. There were four girls and three boys, I think. (Laughter) I didn't run around with them too much.

Little Thunder: Because your folks were living in Indiahoma?

Hood: Between Indiahoma and Cache.

Little Thunder: And your dad did what for a living?

Hood: He was like a bus driver in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. There's a base there in Lawton, Oklahoma. That's where he came in.

Little Thunder: So you're growing up half-white. How did that impact you?

Hood: Well, sometimes it's like the whites like me, and then they don't like me. 12:00Then sometimes the Indians like me, and then they don't like me. So I was kind of in the middle there, stuck. That's why, I guess, my brother is married to a white woman, my older brother. My younger brother, he's still married to a white woman, but I don't care for them. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Well, there's kind of an insider-outsider dynamic that happens with artists a lot.

Hood: I like Indian girls, and I like half-breed girls because they kind of think like I do. That's just the way it is.

Little Thunder: Do you think it impacted your art in any particular way?

Hood: No, no.

Little Thunder: What was your early style like when you and T. C. were experimenting, when you were first starting out, after you saw the Woody Crumbo piece?

Hood: Well, I was still doing horse and riders and trying to do the backgrounds differently. I really didn't know what T. C. was doing until I seen T. C. at a powwow in Oklahoma City. We didn't talk much about art. We were drinking beer and having a good time, but he said he was going to school up east somewhere at a college. He was a very smart individual.

Little Thunder: Did he go to Dartmouth for a while?

Hood: I think so. I really don't know. I think so. I remember when he got killed, and that really hurt me because a lot of people like to talk. They said, "Well, we think the girl was driving." I don't care who it is. If you're driving under the influence--you don't know who was driving at the time. The girl didn't even get a scratch, and he died like he said, "with diamond-clenched teeth on the desert." He was a smart dude.

Little Thunder: Who were some of the artists you admired when you started out? Did you know Leonard Riddles at all?

Hood: Yes, I knew Leonard Riddles personally, but I didn't like his work as much 15:00as I did Blackbear Bosin.

Little Thunder: Yes, I can see why. (Laughs)

Hood: That was really hard to do, like the mane of a horse when they're running. You have the thin lines, and you've got to learn how to do the thin lines. If you don't start from the get-go, you'll never get it. It took me a long time to find out how to do that, and when I done it, I made a lot of money.

Little Thunder: So it was on your own, you just kept working on that--

Hood: Oh, yes, everything was on my own. I didn't have no instructors or anything.

Little Thunder: Did you know about the Institute of American Indian Art?

Hood: No, I really didn't. I think I knew some of the guys that were going to go at one point, but it wasn't going to do me no good. Lee Tsatoke told me one 16:00time, "If you paint on your own, you'll make it." He was right. I made a lot more money than the guys that went to school, all but T. C., if he was alive. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Do you remember when you won your first award for painting?

Hood: Yes, Anadarko, Oklahoma.

Little Thunder: At Indian Fair?

Hood: Yes, when I was first married. That was a long, long time ago.

Little Thunder: What year, approximately?

Hood: I really don't know what year it was. Another guy, he was pretty good. He was a Kiowa, and his name was Bobby Hill. He was really good, and I said, "Me and Bobby Hill is going to bump heads." So me and my wife, (I was married at the 17:00time) we went there, and they said that I had won the Grand Award. I went, "What? You mean I beat--"

Little Thunder: That's wonderful.

Hood: Yes, and the guy congratulated me.

Little Thunder: So you were how old, about?

Hood: I really don't know. I was young.

Little Thunder: You think you were twenty?

Hood: Twenty-five, twenty-six because I started painting when I was about twenty-three. That's kind of late, I think. I should've been doing it a long time ago.

Little Thunder: But you were apparently drawing, and you were experimenting, but you weren't trying to make a living.

Hood: Yes, but I didn't use any paints. They didn't have acrylic, then. They just had watercolor. Everybody was doing flat stuff, and I didn't like that. I started putting shades to everything. I just started doing things my way, 18:00whether anybody liked it or not.

Little Thunder: You did the Philbrook Annual, too. You did that show.

Hood: Yes, I got second, I think. I think I got first or second, once.

Little Thunder: Was Bosin there? Were some of the guys you admired--Hood: Yes, Blackbear Bosin was there. Allan Houser was a good friend of mine. He was there. I forgot this guy's name from North Dakota. What was his name? He was a Lakota Indian guy, and he was good.

Little Thunder: He could do abstract. Oscar. Oscar Howe.

Hood: Oscar Howe. I liked his stuff.

Little Thunder: There were a lot of restrictions even at Philbrook on Indian art.

Hood: I think I heard they wouldn't let him in for a while. Since he was an 19:00Indian, he was doing more stuff than just the ordinary. They let him in, and I think he won in his category. That's kind of what got me going a little bit was painting against other people and other Indians. That was good.

Little Thunder: That competition thing.

Hood: Yes, competition thing, and getting a fat check every now and then. I said, "I didn't know! How cool." (Laughter) Then I got a lot of friends that would say, "Paint this. You ought to paint this."

Little Thunder: They would give you ideas?

Hood: Tried to give me ideas, but I already had ideas in my head. Once I go to sleep, the next day I knew what I wanted to paint because I'd dream about 20:00something and--

Little Thunder: A lot of artists, when they are starting out, they'll do those commissions because you know it's work that they'll pay for, but you weren't into commissions too much, ever?

Hood: No. No. I've had a few people that asked me, but I didn't want to stand on a ladder all day. That's hard work.

Little Thunder: Oh, like on a mural or something.

Hood: Yes, a mural and this and that. I've had people that said, "I'll give you X amount of money," a lot, and I turned them down. I don't like that because I've seen some that was real good, but they tear them down sometimes. And sometimes it looks terrible, some of them right now. I just don't like that. I 21:00like mine to stay where they're at, on canvases and hanging in somebody's house. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I think you did some mall shows. The art shows, they would have prize money, and there would be sales sometimes. I know some of those mall shows, like in the late-'60s, early '70s--do you remember some of those?

Hood: Sure, I do. One of my best friends was Will Sampson, and him and I would go to malls and paint and--

Little Thunder: Could you just set up, kind of, anywhere if you wanted to?

Hood: Yes, yes.

Little Thunder: They wouldn't charge you a booth rental?

Hood: No, not then. That was a different time, time zone, I'd say. If you just put your name and say, "Hey, I'd like to come to the show," they'd say, "Okay, 22:00you're welcome." I'd bring a blanket, and I'd throw it over, and you could paint while you're sitting there. They had beer right there, so we'd go over there, sit down and drink beer.

Little Thunder: Were they just Indian art shows, or were they a mixture of categories, any kind of artists?

Hood: No, it was Indian art shows. No whites or anything like that.

Little Thunder: What did you price your pieces at, typically?

Hood: Hundred and fifty, it was about that.

Little Thunder: That's a pretty good price back then.

Hood: That was pretty good. I was selling real good, and my buddy, Will Sampson, he wasn't selling anything. He just couldn't sell anything. He was always 23:00borrowing money from me. (Laughter) One day after he made it into the acting business, he came home, and I went to see him. He looked at me, and he says, "I know I owe you money, but I ain't going to pay you. I ain't got no money." (Laughter) So I didn't ask him. I said, "Well, we're still buddies."

Little Thunder: What were your colors, your palette, like then? Were they as bright as they got to be, or were you working with more earth tones?

Hood: I was always like that. I hardly mixed my paints. What I liked was just what I used. Sometimes I would add something dark, like brown to make a red kind 24:00of brownish. Then you can see where the red would come out brighter. A lot of people didn't know how that was done. "What kind of paint did you use to make that?"

Little Thunder: So were you using acrylics at that point, or are these still watercolors?

Hood: No, I started watercolor. Most of my stuff started watercolor, but when I started with acrylics, that got different because they were hard to handle. They were very thick, so if you're going to do anything with acrylics, you better know what you're doing. (Laughter) Watercolor, if you make one mistake, you're through. Acrylics, it's between watercolor and oil. You can cover your mistakes up if you want.

Little Thunder: Did you ever catch any flack about your use of color? You didn't catch flack from Indian artists, did you? Did patrons ever say to you, "That's not Indian art"?

Hood: No. (Laughter) They came straight to me and said, "Boy, that's great Indian art!" I never caught no flack in any way.

Little Thunder: How long were you based in Oklahoma? You had been in California, and you stayed with your brother for about a year?

Hood: Yes, and I lived with my mother for a little while.

Little Thunder: Here in Oklahoma.

Hood: Yes, and then I went to Oklahoma City, and I stayed there for about ten years. Then from there I came to Texas, and so I've been here ever since.

Little Thunder: How did you end up here?

Hood: There was a very rich man, a multimillionaire, that liked my stuff, and he said, "Hey, are you ready to get out of Oklahoma?" I said, "Are you ready to take me to Texas?" (Laughter) He said, "You bet!" I said, "Let's go." So we hauled all the art. He had a Budweiser truck, and we just kind of loaded it up and brought everything here in one haul.

Little Thunder: So was he a patron, in the sense that he bought your work once you got here?

Hood: Oh, yes. He bought a lot. He bought a lot, yes. He kept me afloat for a long time. Once I got started here and quit Santa Fe, it's like I get calls all the time, or the internet.

Little Thunder: Did you actually live in Santa Fe for a year or two?

Hood: No, I lived in Boulder for about a year or two. That was good! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Plus, you did that Spirit Horse for White Horse Gallery, I guess.

Hood: Yes, I sure did.

Little Thunder: Did the owner commission that piece?

Hood: No. I was with a gal, and she was a Lakota gal. She said, "You seem like you have medicine on you." I said, "Well, I seem like I do, too." We were just kind of kidding around. She said, "You see that man walking that way? He's a medicine man." So I said, "Well, let's go see him." I walked over there, and I started talking to him, and he gave me some corn out of a little bag he had. He 28:00gave me some corn. I told him I was going to do that corn walk from Taos to Blue Lake and back. That's like fifteen--I think it's fifteen miles. Anyway, when we got there, they were already gone, so we hung around there and then went back to Santa Fe.

Things just turn out the way they turn out. I liked Santa Fe for a while. I met a guy that could make a dollar off of his brother. He said, "Rance, would you do this for me? Would you do that for me?" I said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll cut a deal with you, if you do what I say. Get us on the Plaza." I said, 29:00"If you get us on the Plaza, I'll put my work in with you." He said, "Okay." So he got on the Plaza, and he gave me a call. He said, "I'm on the Plaza." I said, "How many paintings you got?" He said, "None." I said, "Well, what are you going to do? I don't have any, either." He said, "Well, you better get to working." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: He was like a dealer or a gallery owner?

Hood: Well, yes, he wanted to be in the art business, and he heard of me a long time ago. He was a lot younger than I was. I said, "All right." I got with him, and we started making a lot of money. That's the first time I made over a hundred thousand dollars. We started making a hundred thousand dollars like every year. People were buying large pieces, and he said, "Paint them big!"

Little Thunder: So you were living in Texas at that point?

Hood: I was living here, but I was traveling back and forth on that Suburban I had out there. That Suburban's got 165,000 miles on it, and when I bought it, it had probably 150. (Laughter) I ran the wheels off that thing.

Little Thunder: We've talked a little about business lessons. One of them had to do with contracts. Also, I read, early in your career you had a bad experience with a gallery that printed without your permission.

Hood: Oh, two or three times.

Little Thunder: So you decided to learn the printing business for yourself.

Hood: Yes and, boy, I tell you what. I'm so glad giclees are here. I've got a friend that's here in town. I can just say, "Hey, I've got a couple of paintings. Do you want to do a couple of giclees on them?" And she always says yes. She does a good job.

Little Thunder: Do you want to explain real quick what a giclee is?

Hood: Oh, that's hard. They're about that round. It's a round deal. I don't know how you work the buttons on it. It's kind of like a computer, but--

Little Thunder: But more color per square inch, and better color.

Hood: Yes, and it's a closer color. Stephen Stills [Graham Nash] is the one that done it, and he's a musician. He's the one that come up with that first.

Little Thunder: Oh, I didn't know that. First developed and experimented with 32:00that process?

Hood: Yes, he developed the giclee. I know him. I know Stephen Stills. I know a lot of the rock stars.

Little Thunder: Did you meet them through your artwork or--

Hood: Yes. A lot of them wanted me to do the--you know, when they had albums. They used to want me to put album covers for them. I didn't do anybody's album cover, but [Carlos] Santana, he went and bought a piece from me. He said, "I love it. I'm going to put this on my," one of these little cassettes. I said, "That's all right." So that's pretty good.

These other guys that I ran around with, they're old like me. (Laughs) They don't go out, playing music. They might go out playing, but they don't go play music. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: When and how did you end up working at Krauss Printing Company?

Hood: There were three of us. We were buddies, and we needed money real bad. One, he's still alive, but he's in the state penitentiary for life, and the other guy is very sick. They needed me, and so we went over there, and they said, "Y'all are hired." We looked at each other and started laughing because we've been crazy all our lives. (Laughter) We got to doing all kinds of things 34:00they wanted us to do. They were paying us good.

Little Thunder: Was it a press that did mainly artists' reproductions?

Hood: No. They were doing iron-on transfers for shirts and for ball shirts and stuff like that. I started sketching some crazy things, real funny stuff, and they said, "Could we do that?" I said, "Well, sure." Then we'd run a hundred, hundred and fifty of them. I don't know how many I done.

Little Thunder: Would they give you like a percentage to sell?

Hood: No, because we were just having fun, and it was just a little batch of us. 35:00I said, "Hey, I'm going to a powwow in Gallup, New Mexico. Could I take some of them iron-on transfers?" And she said, "Take as many as you want. You're the owner of them. We just got the place for people to buy them if they want." I said, "Okay." So I took a whole batch of them to Gallup, New Mexico. That was the first thousand dollars I've ever made! (Laughter) I liked to have died.

Little Thunder: Wow! At the Ceremonial?

Hood: Yes, we were selling them for a dollar apiece! We got us a booth. The 36:00booth was free. They kind of knew who I was. We were selling them for a dollar apiece. We ran out of that, so I started making these hair bands. I don't know how I done it. I still don't know how to--for women, and it's just the plumes. My wife went to town and bought a bunch of plumes in a box, and I said, "Goodness! What are we going to do?" I remember the plumes were red and blue, so I just put red and blue together with a safety pin, and I laid them out. Oh, we started selling them for five bucks apiece, and they were going (snaps). We were there two days, and I made over a thousand dollars. I said, "Let's go home. I'm 37:00tired." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You don't know, approximately, what year that was?

Hood: No, no I don't. I'm a big Indian. I just live through this world. I'm ready for the next one. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What do you think has been one of your most important art awards that you've received?

Hood: I don't know. I got a Spur Award. I used to do the cover for Appaloosa Journal out of Idaho, and they gave me an Appaloosa horse. I thought that was really good. I mean a bronze Appaloosa horse. This was out onstage in Dallas, 38:00Texas. Oh, we had a good time.

Little Thunder: Were they acknowledging the fact that you've done paintings for the Appaloosa organization?

Hood: Oh, yes. This was a gift from the Appaloosa Journal to Rance Hood, and they didn't have very many of them. That's what I liked about it. I can't think of his name, but he's the one that done the sculpture piece. He's a western actor, and I remember him coming out. They said he was coming out on his horse to make a round in Sedona, Arizona. He fell off his horse, and they ran over there to pick him up, and he was dead. He had a heart attack.

Little Thunder: I think I read that the paintings that you did, which they would 39:00use as posters, were some of their best-selling posters for the Appaloosa people.

Hood: Oh, yes. Yes, we sold a lot. We sold a lot of Appaloosa posters. (Laughter) Boy, people would get mad when I sold out. "Well, could you tell him to do another one just like that one?" I'd go, "I don't live over there in Idaho. I don't know them people that well. I just draw for them."

Little Thunder: It's kind of nice that you've gotten through these different horse magazines or western magazines. I always like to see that. It's kind of like they're acknowledging Indians are cowboys, too. Indians were really the first cowboys, and it's nice they cover you in their articles.

Hood: Yes. They were real nice. They weren't like certain people I run into, the bad people that, "I'll pay you," and they don't. They paid me. You've got to watch that. I try to teach young artists that because they don't know. I didn't know when I got into the art business. I didn't know that I was going to come this far because once you start selling, you're selling like mad, and some people won't pay you. Here two or three years ago, I was in a gallery in Santa Fe, and I trusted Indians. I trusted this Indian guy with my artwork. I said, "Hey, you owe me, like, seven or eight thousand dollars. When are you going to 41:00pay me?" And he said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, first come, first serve." So I just went to the DA, and I told them what he said. The DA snatched him up and brought him in and said, "If you don't pay Rance Hood in five days, you're going to the pen." (Laughs) I got me a check within five days. That was pretty good. I got all of my paintings out of his place, too. I seen a couple of young Indian boys that had their artwork in there, and I couldn't just walk up and tell them because a big fight would've started, or something like that.

Little Thunder: What were the major changes for you during the '90s, in terms of your artwork and the landscape of Indian art, selling Indian art during that time?

Hood: See my abstract. I started doing abstract--you got to understand, abstract's hard. It's like that tipi up there. The tipi is not for sale because I could have sold it a thousand times, but I just won't. There's certain things you like because it turns out right. Abstract is very hard to do. Some people think it's easy, but it's not.

Little Thunder: Why is it so hard?

Hood: You've got to know what you're doing, and you've got to know where to put the paint. The paint don't stay in one place. It runs, so you've got to watch what it does all the time. You have to sit with it. You've got to babysit it, I 43:00guess. (Laughter) When it starts to move that way, you've got to put something under there, a can, and then it starts moving this way. "Well, that'll be good." You've got to watch it.

Little Thunder: Okay, so you're actually tilting the board or the canvas to get the effect you want.

Hood: Yes, the canvas, that's the way you do it.

Little Thunder: Some of the ones I've seen that I really like, too, they have almost as much movement as your galloping horses, in a different way. The eye is traveling around. Sometimes when you put a fixed image in there and then you've got an abstract background--

Hood: That's what a lot of people say about the eyes. I've had more people say, "I like the eyes of your horses," but I don't concentrate on the eyes. I concentrate on the whole shebang, but I want the background to look good, too.

Little Thunder: In 1990, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act was passed, requiring artists to provide proof of tribal enrollment, or a letter of certification from their tribe. I was wondering if you remember how that impacted the Indian art scene, galleries, artists?

Hood: Oh, Senator--what is his name, from Colorado? Ben Nighthorse [Campbell] is the one that done that. I thanked him for it. I think he done a darn good job because it was a lot of people, a lot of white people that was doing Indian art. There's still a lot of white people doing Indian art but saying that they're 45:00white because they don't want to get in trouble. They just said, "Well, that's my own work, and I can paint anything I want to paint." I know R. C. Gorman didn't like that. He didn't like that at all. I used to talk to him about that, and he said, "They should cut all their heads off!" (Laughter) I thought that was pretty good.

Little Thunder: That reminds me. R. C. gave Gina Gray some tips on her signature. How did you end up formulating your signature?

Hood: I don't remember because I was young. I wanted something odd that would catch somebody's eye, so I started making a peace pipe, and out of the smoke, I 46:00put my name in there. That's a lot to do. That's why a lot of these things are not signed: because I'm lazy. (Laughter) I don't like to work anymore. That's how a lot of buyers find my stuff, they said, is through that pipe.

Before one of my younger brothers died, Larry, he was painting. He said, "Hell with them!" He done about ten or fifteen paintings real quick, and he put my name on it, put my name on there like I do, and he went through the Southwest selling them. "Rance told me to sell these." They were terrible! I got mad. I 47:00said, "I'm going to beat him up when he gets back." Some of the guys I was with said, "Don't do that." They said, "Whoever is stupid enough to buy paintings that look like that, it will catch up with them down the line."

Little Thunder: He didn't ever ask you for any help or tips? Larry didn't?

Hood: A little bit. Yes, a little bit. I told him, I said, "Do your own thing." He was doing a lot of my--trying to copy me. I said, "Do your own thing. You can copy me, but move away, just kind of move away from me." He said, "Okay," and then he got lupus and died, lupus of the bone. I guess that's pretty bad.

Little Thunder: You had a book come out in 2000, and you're listed as a co-author. A lot of the content is you writing or speaking about your work. I was wondering, did you, from the beginning, know what you wanted the book to look like and where you wanted to have control over the material?

Hood: Yes, I had control and everything. Way before that, ten years before that, I had the same fellow, Professor John Rohner--he wanted to do a book on me. He just kept wanting to do a book on me. I didn't really care for it because I was still painting and making a lot of money. I didn't want them buying the book 49:00instead of one of my paintings. You've got to think like that. You want your work to move instead of a poster. A poster is like fifty bucks, and you want to make 250 or 300 dollars. So that's what we done. It was just--it was rough.

Little Thunder: Getting people to send in pictures of all the work? There's a big body of work.

Hood: Oh, the book was like--I wouldn't go through that again. It's hard, yes.

Little Thunder: A couple years' process?

Hood: Yes, a couple of years, and then you're limited. You get phone calls, "You 50:00better hurry up," and I'm flying. I didn't like that at all. You've got to hurry. Everything is slow down and hurry up.

Little Thunder: One of the things I really like about the book is that after talking about a painting, you'll put in parentheses whether your inspiration was from a dream or from experience.

Hood: Right. I put that in there.

Little Thunder: So that was your idea, and it's important for you to convey that.

Hood: It was important for me to do that because of the dreams I was having. You dream of something like a galloping horse and two or three of them behind him. I thought of that, and then I came in here and starting sketching it out, what I seen and what I didn't forget. It turned out better than the dream, some of 51:00them, and some of them don't. That's just the way it is.

Little Thunder: So nowadays, you use both acrylics and watercolor?

Hood: No, just acrylic. If people ask for watercolor, I'll do watercolor, but you don't want to do watercolor on canvas, and I'm so used to canvas. It's better, and it's going to last longer. I don't know really how long acrylic is going to last, but I'm pretty sure acrylic is going to last longer than oil for some reason.

Little Thunder: That's interesting. Your skies are always really dramatic. They 52:00look to me like they've got lots of layers. I guess sections of your sky have layers of color.

Hood: Yes. Some of them are just flat, but that's what--if you roll your brush over them to make clouds and things, you can make a lot of clouds. You can do anything, but you got to learn it. Once you learn it, you've got her made, but that takes time. It's like playing guitar. I play guitar, but it takes me a long time to get what I want out of it.

Little Thunder: I really like your winter paintings.

Hood: Everybody does. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: There's that struggle. There's the struggle to survive in there, but there's also really a powerful spiritual element to winter. I wonder if you 53:00could talk about that.

Hood: I think a long time ago, the Plains Indians went through a lot harder, way harder, times than we did in tipis. They didn't have, really, the medicine that we have nowadays. I think they had a hard time. A lot of kids died of influenza then. We had so many Indian doctors that they just couldn't take care of everybody. Some of the camps were large, so we just had a rough time during the wintertime. That piece right there, I like that piece there. I don't know what it is about tipis, but I can paint tipis like that, and they move faster than 54:00anything else. But they got to be snow! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: They have to come with snow, huh?

Hood: Yes, they've got to come with snow. If I put all of this in a real nice position, I wouldn't sell anything. (Laughter) I had a buddy that lived over across the river, and he had all of his paintings in line. The paints, had them all in a line, all of them. His stack of canvases was right here, and I said, "Do you sell any of these?" He said, "No, not yet."

Little Thunder: That's why he was so organized. (Laughs)

Hood: I said, "Hey, man! You go in my studio and look around. You'll catch on 55:00real quick!" You've got to remember where they're at.

Little Thunder: Well, coming back to your horses again, it's really difficult to do horses in motion.

Hood: Yes.

Little Thunder: Most of your horses, their feet aren't even touching the ground. I'm wondering if you work from photographs sometimes or motion studies, or is it all in your head?Hood: Just all in my head. I don't work with anything mechanical or anything like that. I tried one time, and I went, "Huh-uh."

Little Thunder: To use a photograph?

Hood: Yes. Well, you slide a little deal in there, and you put your canvas up. I said, "No."

Little Thunder: Oh, like a projector?

Hood: Yes. I said--it wouldn't work, so I got rid of that.

Little Thunder: You do a lot of figures in twos. They're not mirror images. They're different. Each one is different, but they come in pairs. I wondered what draws you to that.

Hood: I don't know. I know I put a lot of fours in just about every one of them because that's the way the Indians pray, four times. I always put fours in there, like four feathers, he's holding four feathers, or like on a lance, he's holding four feathers, or in his hair. Somewhere, you'll find the four, and it's the prayer that goes with the painting. When I told this guy that, that collects my work, oh, he goes crazy. After I told him, that's when he gave me that mite, that little coin during Jesus' time. Yes, it's really neat.

Little Thunder: Can you talk a bit about your slash technique of painting?

Hood: That was pretty rough. I've got a garage out there, and it's large, so that's where I do all the slashing. Let me tell you, some people like it. It's so weird! That's a slashing technique, and--

Little Thunder: You've got your image, but you're working on the floor?

Hood: Oh, yes, I put that on the floor, and then I take a brush, a different kind of brush--

Little Thunder: A different size?

Hood: A different brush. It's different size. You can use a couple of different sizes because you can get thick, see, like that, thick, and then you can get the thin. You just got to know how to do it. It's a learning thing, which is hard to do.

Little Thunder: Do you remember when you first started doing it?

Hood: Yes. I was painting, and the paintbrush fell out of my hand and rolled across, and I went, "Oh, God." (Laughter) I got mad, and I just started going like that. (Gestures) Good thing it was snow. I just kept whipping it, and I just dumped the thing into the paint, and I'd do that. Some woman came in and seen it and bought it. I went, "Huh?" So, hey.

Little Thunder: You knew you had something there.

Hood: Yes, so I'd do that, too.

Little Thunder: You've done a couple sculptures, I guess.

Hood: Yes. When I lived in Anadarko for ten years, I done a lot of sculpture pieces, but they're all gone. They were stone instead of bronze. I've done a couple of bronze pieces, but that don't get me off. I'd rather paint and have a hard time. It's just that way.

Little Thunder: You were living in Anadarko in the '60s or '70s?

Hood: Something like that.

Little Thunder: Do you do a lot of sketching or preliminary studies before you start a painting?

Hood: Yes, I do a lot of sketching. I do sketch work and balance it out, and then I put a couple of tapes up there, and put it up there. Blacken the back and then put on the main subject, and then go to work, but I do the background first. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do the background first and then your image.

Little Thunder: Do you always see them together, the image, or the figure, and the background together? You always know what you're going to put on that background in advance?

Hood: Yes, I know pretty well what I'm going to do when I start because once you start, you're not going to quit. I used to quit. I was bad about that. I could paint half of a horse and rider and go, "I quit."

Little Thunder: Really? You could just leave it unfinished.

Hood: Unfinished, and someone would buy it, so there's a lot of unfinished stuff out there. (Laughter) And they'd buy it for the amount I wanted.

Little Thunder: You grew up, from before you were born, hearing those peyote songs, and what I like about your Native American Church paintings is you're not just showing us some of the symbolic elements. You really are trying to get us to feel a bit of the feeling that comes from that ceremony.

Hood: Yes. That's what my grandfather was. He was a road man. He done the fire. I used to go with him when I was small, so I learned real quick. When you're small, you learn things, Indian things. While they're speaking, you understand. You know what they're talking about. I remember this one old man told my grandfather inside of the tipi. He rolled him up a cigarette with, you know, the leaves they used to cut. He rolled him up a smoke, and he told him to give him a light. So my grandpa got a stick, and I guess everybody's high in there. He stuck his finger. (Laughs) That old man went "Yah!" after what he done. He said, "I ain't going to ask you for a light no more!" My grandpa seen the wrong cigarette! (Laughter) We used to laugh about that all the time.

Little Thunder: What's your creative routine like these days?

Hood: Sleeping. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You don't have a preference for working more at night or in the morning?

Hood: Anytime. Whenever I feel like it, I'll take it, but if I don't, I won't. Now, if something I've been working on isn't finished, I'll finish it, not like I used to. I was real lazy, then. An artist, any artist, God blessed them with that because you can do anything you want to. People think, "How'd you do that?" I'll tell them, but they still don't know how to do it. I have a lot of people that want me to teach them how. I said, "I ain't no teacher. I'm just a painter."

Little Thunder: So you haven't given art lessons to anybody?

Hood: No, no. I have some young kids that's growing up, young boys, that want to paint, and I just tell them, "Stay with it. Just stay with it. Whether you make mistakes or not, stay with it. You'll get it."

Little Thunder: So what's your creative process like, from the time you dream about something or have an idea?

Hood: If something really comes up that's strong when I'm sleeping or when I wake up, and I dreamed about something really strong that I like, that's when I'll grab me a canvas and go to work.

Little Thunder: Or you'll do your sketching and then--

Hood: Yes, I'll do my sketching, but sometimes when you get my age, you get seventy years old, you don't hardly have to sketch. You just go about it.

Little Thunder: Right, you're painting straight on the canvas most of the time. When you think back over your career, what's one of the defining moments, do you think? When you went one direction, you could have gone another, but you went this one way.

Hood: When I was about twenty-one. When I was twenty-one years old, and when I seen that one painting of old man Crumbo's, I knew because it hit me in the heart. You know you're Indian when you see something like that and you go, "Hey, this guy is a real Indian, and he didn't give on his people." That's the way I'm going to be. I'm going to paint all my life, whether I make a penny or not. (Laughter) I didn't know there was money in it. There's a lot of money in it if you know how to do it, if you follow the game correctly. There's a lot of money in it.

Little Thunder: Looking back, what do you think has been one of the high points of your career? It might be one you've mentioned already, but just one of the high points.

Hood: Selling that fifty-thousand-dollar piece. (Laughter) That was one of the high points, I think.

Little Thunder: That was here within the last couple of years?

Hood: It was last year. After the IRS got me, I added it up, and he really bought it for three dollars.

Little Thunder: Oh, my goodness.

Hood: And if I knew that, I would've never sold that piece, never. But, hey.

Little Thunder: It was a surprise call, right? I don't think we talked about the circumstances of the sale.

Hood: Yes, it was real quick. It was very quick, but I look at myself as, "Hell, I can do another one, even a better one." I got the canvases in the back for it. I seen a fellow, a friend of mine that was an artist, and he was telling me, "I'm running out of paint, and I'm running out of this." I thought, "Damn! I've never run out of anything." When I buy canvases, I buy a lot of them, and I buy a lot of acrylics, so I'm prepared.

Little Thunder: That's how artists spend their money, isn't it?

Hood: Well, no. It's really not that much. Well, they went up on the canvases, but, still, it's not that much, and the paints and all of that. When he said that, I couldn't understand that because I've got so many of them that I don't think of that anymore. I guess I've made it, and it's--

Little Thunder: Not a struggle to have the materials.

Hood: No, not a struggle no more.

Little Thunder: What's one of the low points in your career?

Hood: When I signed my John Henry to the five-year contract. That's the low point. They duped me on that. I thought I was signing a three-year, but they got me. I heard that even the lawyer got paid for it, too, so everybody was after me that day. I looked. They showed me the three-year, and another lawyer told me they slipped another one under there. "Gotcha." That's what he said.

Little Thunder: And you did fulfill it, but you were--

Hood: Yes. And on the little horse that I done--you know the little horse that most of the artists done?

Little Thunder: Oh, the Trail of Painted Ponies?

Hood: Yes, Trail of Painted Ponies. This Mr. Barker told all the artists a big lie. He said, "You get one of them, you give me five thousand dollars, and I'll give you one of them. You'll be up to par, and whomever you're helping will benefit from it," and blah, blah, blah. He just cheated everybody, all the artists.

Little Thunder: He charged the artists to reproduce their version of the painted ponies?

Hood: Yes. He cheated everybody, all the artists. Listen to me. He cheated all the artists and turned around, and his own lawyer sued him. I think his own lawyer is richer than he is now.

Little Thunder: My goodness. I did read that your pony was one of the best-selling--

Hood: It's the best-selling, and I got two or three letters from different people and from the people that sell the painted ponies. They said, "Your pony was the best one, the best seller." A John Nieto [pony], all these other guys that's supposed to be real good, he's already put them to pasture. I said, "Hey, when are you ever going to put mine to pasture?" He wouldn't answer me. Now, you know what I get? I get lamp shades, something that's made out of my horse's head. I mean, how is he--he's still selling them to this day!

Little Thunder: And you don't get a percentage?

Hood: No, never got a penny.

Little Thunder: Well, we're going to look at your paintings here in a minute. I wonder if there's anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to cover, or anything that you'd like to--

Hood: That'll be about it.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Hood: That's the slash technique. This painting here is the one I call The Four Prayers because I put the peyote in there with the built-up acrylic. They look like and they feel like peyote, the hard, dried up ones. That's the prayer, and this little line here is your lifeline. And the peyote men in the tipi, if you passed the chief and go down here, it stops them where--the guy who's looking at it knows when he's going to die. This side I done abstract like Jackson Pollock. 56:00That's all the things that's in your mind and where you've been and things like that. You know what I'm talking about? It's one of my favorite pieces.

Little Thunder: It's really wonderful. Yes, I love that built-up quality.

Hood: It's a sixty by seventy, and that's pretty large, vertical. Of course, I didn't sign it. I put everything on there. It took me probably two months to do, and then I put the hand in it. I put all of this little stuff. You can't see it real good with the deal you got, but that's horse hair. I done the shield, which 57:00I'm still working on. That's why I come in and I look at it a lot. I was just telling [you] earlier, I sold one for fifty thousand dollars that sat here for about two years. I wasn't finished with it yet, and he bought it for fifty grand. So don't ever finish a painting or you won't sell it! (Laughter) The background changes sometimes. In different lighting it changes dark to light green, turquoise, and it's got the bells and the beaded deal on the horse neck. 58:00Martingale, they call that. That's one of my better pieces.

Little Thunder: Right. That is just really nice.

Hood: This piece here is an original Rance Hood-style painting. You have all the gravel and everything that looks like gravel. The horse, which is black, but looking blue, I kind of done him as a Comanche. You can see all the eagle feathers he's holding, and the lance, which is the prayers that he has in his heart. On the horse, he's got a skull of a buffalo, which we were raised on a long time ago, and certain markings on the face and everything. That's about it.

Little Thunder: Just really a wonderful piece, too. Thank you so much for your time today, Rance.

Hood: Thank you. You're welcome.

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