Oral history interview with Ron Mitchell

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is December 13, 2013, and I'm in Wagoner, Oklahoma, talking with Cherokee artist Ron Mitchell. Ron, you've been in the Native art business for more than forty-two years, and you've won over three hundred awards at numerous Native art shows in and out of state. You're known for your creative approaches in matting and presenting artwork, as well. You always have a beautiful, professional booth setup--

Mitchell: Thank you.

Little Thunder: --and you recently moved to Wagoner from Prague. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

Mitchell: It was my pleasure.

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

Mitchell: I was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, when my dad was in the Army. He was stationed there after being up in the Aleutian Islands during the early outbreak of the war. I grew up at different Army bases around the world until I was in the eighth grade. Every year I was at a different school, and three years I was in Germany for a while.

Little Thunder: Oh, my goodness. You mentioned that your dad was in the Army. 1:00How about your mom?

Mitchell: Mom was a housewife. She pretty much stayed around the house. Always kind of related to Dad running it like continuing part of the Army: He was the first sergeant, Mom was the corporal, and me and my brother were the privates. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So one sibling. Is he older or younger?

Mitchell: He's younger. Yeah, I was an only child for six years, and he came along and messed it up.

Little Thunder: Is your Cherokee on your mom or your dad's side?

Mitchell: My dad's side.

Little Thunder: Did you have much contact with your grandparents on either side?

Mitchell: Actually, both grandparents on both sides. When we were stateside, particularly before my brother was born, when Dad was stationed at Fort Sill, I spent a lot of the summers in Tulsa and Locust Grove. My mother's mother lived in Tulsa, and my dad's mother, the Cherokee, she lived in Locust Grove. They'd stick me on a bus and send me back and forth. I remember, four or five years 2:00old, riding the bus back and forth by myself. Do that today. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: I bet that was a great adventure. Were you around the language, then, a little bit and culture, growing up?

Mitchell: Grandma spoke Cherokee. She was not a traditionalist. A lot of her friends were. She was a Baptist. We had an interesting history about the language. I didn't know it when I was younger. I know now, but growing up, all my cousins on my Cherokee side of the family are girls. Grandma would, when we would all stay up there at her house at Locust during the summer, after breakfast every day she'd make the girls stay in and teach them Cherokee. I was allowed to go outside and play. I never thought anything about it. I just thought I was a privileged character, being the only male child.

Later, reviewing history and looking at some of our family records, I ran across 3:00a letter from Anthony Foreman. He married Susan Gourdfields. This was in the 1700s, so that's seven generations back. In this letter, he wrote that, "I want all the male children to dress and speak English," because they were going to have to carry on business in a white man's world. He wanted all the girls to speak and dress Cherokee, to carry on the Cherokee tradition. The irony of the thing is that I'm the only one that carried on the Cherokee tradition today, and I still don't speak the language. (Laughs) I couldn't even ask for cornbread if I was starving.

Little Thunder: Wow, and this is the Foreman family that you come from?

Mitchell: Yes. Yes, ma'am.

Little Thunder: Did you have any other family members who were artists?

Mitchell: Not on our Cherokee side of the family. On my mother's side of the family, the Hensleys, there were some very talented people. My cousin, who's a 4:00year younger than me, she's a well-known wood carver out in the Northwest United States and Oregon.

Little Thunder: What is your first memory of seeing Native art?

Mitchell: Oh, I guess probably when I first started doing art shows because growing up, I just don't recall being around--well, wait a minute. There was a time I remember we went to Spiro Mounds as a little boy. I remember that was probably the first time that I was around anything that was of Native American. Of course, growing up in Locust Grove in the summer, and Dad being in the Army down at Lawton, I was around a lot of the Kiowa and Comanche style of work in high school.

Little Thunder: What is your first memory of making art?

Mitchell: The first memory of making art was actually an experience in the 5:00second grade that probably would've discouraged most people from ever being an artist. Teachers today, I hope are considerably more understanding. At the time, well, I am red-green colorblind, very seriously red-green colorblind. In the second grade, I had no idea I was colorblind. I just thought I was little slow in figuring out colors. I remember we did this Crayola drawing, and it was supposed to be a tree. Of course, I was the only one in the class that actually had roots on the tree, branches on the tree, but she held the picture up in front of the class and tried to humiliate me because of the colors I used in it. She said, "Look at this picture. Can you believe this? He has a purple sky, a green tree trunk, and brown grass." I don't know. It just didn't--maybe it made 6:00me mad. It's like, "I'll show ya," and I hope I did show her.

Little Thunder: Wow. That was undoubtedly an experience in elementary school that was formative. How about art experiences in middle school or high school?

Mitchell: The first award I won was actually in Germany in the fourth grade. I won a poster contest. Then the next time I really had any, that I really noticed that I was probably better than most of the other kids in the class was in seventh grade in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We had a tri-semester where the school year was divided up into three, and one of those semesters was in art. At that class I was if not the best artist, at least one of the best artists in there. The next award I actually won was the ninth grade in Lawton, Oklahoma, I won 7:00First Place in watercolor at a local show that they had there.

Then in high school I really lucked out. I had an outstanding art teacher, Velma Bailey. She took about three, about five of us that were above-average artists and really kind of gave us separate education from the rest of the kids in the class. We entered competitions all over Oklahoma and Texas. In art class we won numerous awards. My junior and senior year in high school, I won First Place in architectural design, graphics. The architectural design was through Central State College, I believe it's called, something, there in Edmond, Oklahoma. I think it's a full university now.

I remember it got to the point that some of the other schools weren't inviting 8:00us to come. (Laughs) Our class was just really doing well, and we had a art club there that was called The Palette and Brush Club. My senior year, I was the vice president of that organization. That was the first time I actually entered a non-school competition. Cache Road Square in Lawton had a spring art festival that year, and they had a student section. I actually entered, and I won First Place in the drawing competition that year out there in the open mall.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. Were you already thinking of yourself as an artist?

Mitchell: No, my family really didn't know what to do with me. I was not a good student. My mind was always off on art, and the few teachers that figured that 9:00out was able to use the art for me to proceed in their classes at a passing level. Mom and Dad, neither one of them really could think of anything to do with art. They were trying to push me into an engineering or an architectural thing, and I actually ended up working for an architectural and structural engineer my junior year in high school after winning that First Place. I actually got a job offer. It was basically the office flunky. You cleaned up, but you're around it. That was a great benefit for me because it introduced me to quality materials.

Up unto that point of time, art in high-school level, you didn't have good quality materials. I mean, you're working with cheap watercolor brushes, 10:00Tempera, newsprint, you know, stuff that--. When I got around these architectural, and they were doing the presentations, and they were using commercial products, airbrushing, illustration board, technical drawing pens, and all this work, its reflection in work I do today is what I learned in being around and actually doing some of that early technical drawing and drafting work.

Little Thunder: I'm sort of surprised in a way that your folks weren't more open to the idea of art, just because of maybe that European exposure, as well, being in Germany. Do you think that impacted you at all?

Mitchell: Well, I'm not sure that that impacted me, but it was the military that did because this is after World War II, 1953, 1954, 1955 in Germany. It'd been, 11:00what, six years after the war had ended. Most enlisted men, which my dad was a sergeant, most of our friends were military, were sergeants. Going into their homes, and even today I think one of the biggest impacts that is even reflected in my work today was early exposure to Oriental work.

Even though we weren't in the Orient, these other enlisted people were. I remember being fascinated by some of these screen prints and block prints from Japanese like Mount Fuji and stuff. If you really look at that work, it's the Trail of Tears. It's Cherokee flat. It's our traditional flat style. They're so parallel to it, so when I started doing the Native work, I immediately drew back on the Oriental work. I think it shows in my work a lot of times. I particularly 12:00like--I use a lot of what I call a woodblock style, trees in my background. It's a stylized tree that's influenced from that 1954, '55, early influence of this Oriental work.

Little Thunder: Thanks for sharing that. What did you do after high school? What was your path?

Mitchell: I was trying to follow my parents' wish to go into the technical or drafting engineering. I went to Cameron [University] for a year. It just didn't work.

Little Thunder: Cameron Junior College?

Mitchell: Yeah, it was a junior college at the time. That just didn't really work out. I decided to go in the Air Force. Had the highest entrance exam score they'd ever had out of Oklahoma City, guaranteed any school I wanted to. Got 13:00down to Lackland [Air Force Base], and they went, "You're color blind. You can't go to any of those schools. What do you want to be, a cook or an air policeman?" I said, "Give me a rifle." Once I got out of there, out of the service, I went down to Dallas and ended up working as a tech illustrator. I didn't even know what a tech illustrator was at the time, but there was a manpower job shop. We called it job shopping back then.

It was a contract-type labor where you actually weren't working directly for the company, but you were doing work with the company. I got into the aerospace technical illustrations, and it combined that drafting and technical background with this creativity that I've always had. It really gave me my first time to express myself. I know there were times that we weren't allowed to get copies of what we had because it was all secret work for the government, which was 14:00disappointing because there were some really interesting things I did. One of the more interesting pieces was a spy telescope for a satellite that was forty-two inches wide, the drawing was, and it was seven feet long. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: My goodness.

Mitchell: I remember I got real mad, though. After I did all the layout, I took a day off and came back, and there was another illustrator ink in it. The artist in me really came out because I blew up.

Little Thunder: Because of the color blind deal or just--

Mitchell: No, the fact that somebody else was inking my work. The color blindness really didn't apparently affect me at that time because it was all black and white that we were dealing with. It was years later before I ever tried to even do any color work.

Little Thunder: While you were working, were you also doing some art on the side on your own time?

Mitchell: Not at that time.

Little Thunder: When did you start?

Mitchell: That time we were working, like, seventy-eight hours a week. You go home and go to sleep; you go back and go to work. The fine art end of it actually resulted because of the aerospace downturn. I was working out in LA, and that was when Rolls Royce went bankrupt. The C-511 plane--a lot of the aircraft, the whole industry almost collapsed. I came back to Oklahoma, ended up getting a job for the Oklahoma City Planning Department, the head of their graphics art section, and had thirteen people working for me. I had a lot of free time because I was spending more time supervising than I was actually doing 16:00any work, and that was the first time I actually remember having a close-up view of an art show.

I looked out the window one spring, that first spring there in 1970, and they were setting up the Festival of the Arts. I looked out the window and I went, I asked them, I said, "What's going on down there?" They said, "That's an art show." I said, "Well, I can do that." (Laughter) Of course, as an artist, I hate hearing people come into the booth and say, "Well, I can do that." Yeah, they can do it, but let them think of the idea to do it. Anyway, I went down and walked through the art show, and I was convinced I could it. I did my first art show later that spring out at Shepherd Mall. No it was Penn Square Mall, excuse me, Penn Square Mall. It was an open mall then, and I shared a booth with two other artists that worked for me in there, and I dragged them out there. They 17:00came kicking and screaming. That was my first introduction.

Little Thunder: So your subject matter was--

Mitchell: At the time I was doing pen-and-ink drawings. I actually started out doing Victorian houses. It was just something that fascinated--I think it goes back to the architectural background, the technical drawing background the first year or so. I've always had a little twisted sense of humor. I was also doing some little acrylic paintings and stuff, and I remember that year I did an acrylic. I started out doing a painting of World War I. I wanted to do a Baron [Manfred] Von Richthofen, the Red Baron. I had the two planes in the sky. I had his Fokker Dr.1 triplane; I had the SPAD coming in over the top of him; and down below I had the Australian troops, sitting there shooting up in the air at him. I had everybody painted but the Australian pilot that was in the SPAD. I sat 18:00there and started shaking my head. I said, "Don't do it." I did it: I put Snoopy in it. (Laughter) People love things like that, when I start doing my off-humor. That was my first phase at it.

Little Thunder: When did you make the switch to full-time? You were already married, I take it?

Mitchell: Right, I was married. We had two children. I was still working for the City, Oklahoma City Planning Department. That next year, I ended up doing twenty-five shows that next year, working full-time. We'd take off, get off Friday evening. We'd do shows, like, in Austin, Texas. We'd drive all night, get down there, I mean two or three in the morning, get up, set up, tear down Sunday 19:00night, and drive back, and go to work.

Little Thunder: Now, when you say "we" was this your family?

Mitchell: My wife would go with me. Seemed like there was always a group of us traveling together, me and a couple other artists. It was always nice to share rooms and share experiences of driving and things. We usually ended up taking vehicles, but at thirty-five, forty cents a gallon, it wasn't that hard to drive a pickup that only got ten miles to the gallon. Fortunately, I was young to be able to handle that. Unfortunately, I had a lead foot, and I had been known to get to shows rather rapidly. During that period of time, it was really hard. The Planning Department had a change in leadership there in the City, (it was a typical political thing) and I saw it as an opportunity to quit and go full-time.

At that point, I stopped, and went into it full-time, and continued doing my 20:00pen-and-ink drawings. I started doing an Escher-influenced type work because M. C. Escher was introduced to the United States about that time. It was very similar to some things I had done, using positive and negative use of space. I think it was about mid-1970s, probably about '76, I had an oil man approach me. Wanted me to do an oil well picture, and I went, "I don't want to do a dirty old oil well." He said "Come on," and he kept on me. I said, "Okay, I'll do it if I can do it the way I want to." I said, "I promise you it'll be quality, but you have to promise to buy it no matter what I do." He went, "Okay."

Well, Oklahoma Crude movie had just been screened there in Oklahoma City that year, and I remember there was an old cable tool rig with a Model-T hooked up, powering the rig. I thought, "I want to show it as a dry hole, just like in the 21:00movie where he didn't hit oil at first." I said, "Well, how do you do that?" I went to the library and went to the geological section and found that there were seven basic geological formations. The first one was a simple--it was just a little bump in the earth, a salt dome or something pushing up where the oil collected at the top. So I did the drawing of this drill drilling down, but I made it miss the oil. He loved it, and the other oil men loved it. They kept getting me to do things.

Little Thunder: So you had commissions, your first commissions.

Mitchell: Oh, yeah, and the more sarcastic I got, the more they loved it. The best-selling piece I ever did, I did 350 prints of it. It was a triptych, and it sold out in three months. It was called The Good, the Bad and the Greedy. Showed a good well; showed a guy missing a well; and the third guy drilling over and stealing oil from the first guy. (Laughter) That went on for quite a few years, 22:00and then 1980, probably '86, I got into a situation where I was not getting into the shows that I'd been doing for years. There were some political things that were causing it, and I thought, "I'm going to just go back to my heritage and start doing Native American work." I run into Jean Bales at Arts for All that year, and she was telling me about the Denver, Colorado, Indian Market. That was the first Indian show I got into, in 1988. Went up there and had a really good show.

Little Thunder: How many pieces did you take?

Mitchell: Oh, gosh, I probably had no more than twelve or fifteen pieces.

Little Thunder: Originals?

Mitchell: Prints. I had a few originals, but mostly prints. I'd got into prints at an early age because I found out with my technical background, I knew how to get, I had the commercial connections for printing and everything. Doing my own black-and-white prints, I was actually doing an aluminum etching back in the ʼ70s and things. As the years went by, I'd say most of my booth was prints with just a few originals.

Little Thunder: So you had a good show there, and that sort of determined your covering Native subjects.

Mitchell: Right. It was kind of a struggle at first because not growing up around my own culture, exposed to the Kiowa and Comanche as well as the Cherokee, it was kind of mixed bag there for a while.

Little Thunder: You did some Plains images?

Mitchell: Oh, yeah. A lot of my work was influenced by so many of the artists. I particularly liked the Kiowa Comanche flat style. The reason I liked it, it was a technically controlled media. Being color blind, if I'm going to work in color, I have to be able to control where that color goes through. By using the flat colors, it was easy for my mind to relate to the colors. During that same period of time, I decided to kind of deviate a little bit from the traditional flat style. I wanted to introduce a full-color sky in the background of a flat-style painting. Unfortunately, when I looked at a sunset, I couldn't tell what the colors were, so I had to get my wife and my friends to tell me the 25:00colors in the sky.

I trained them to start at the horizon and go up at 10 percent intervals, and tell me the colors they see. Of course, that really started by accident. It was a comment my wife made one evening. We were driving out West. She said, "Isn't that a beautiful pink sunset?" I said, "It can't be." She said, "What do you mean, 'it can't be'?" I said, "What color's the sky?" She said, "Blue." I said, "What color's the sun?" She said, "Yellow." I said, "Any first-year art student knows that yellow and blue is green. That's a beautiful green sunset." That's really what got me interested in doing the skies, and I think it's worked quite well for me.

Little Thunder: And you would find the paints with those colors?

Mitchell: Right. We started out really simple. We actually went to a poster store there in Oklahoma City, and I picked out six or seven different posters that had contemporary colors, Southwestern-type colors that was real popular at the time. She helped pick. We narrowed it down to basically five basic colors 26:00and black and white. Those colors, basically most of my paintings are built around those primary design colors that I use. It's a very technical way to approach art, but it's the only way I can handle color.

Little Thunder: That's a neat technique there. What's one award that you won in a Native art show early on that was important to you?

Mitchell: Oh, gosh, there's so many that's been important to me. I think the one that's most important to me I haven't gotten yet. It's the Indian Arts and Crafts Association, a national organization of artists. I have been a runner-up eight times since 1988, and it frustrates me that I can't win Indian Artist of the Year. I think that's probably the most important one is the fact that I haven't got it yet. I'm still trying. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Who were some of the Native artists that you admired or that you sort of got to know as you started doing shows?

Mitchell: The early stages when I first started doing it, Rance Hood influenced some of my work, as well as Barthell Little Chief, and then of course--I hate it when I have a mind blank like that. Some of our Cherokee traditional--

Little Thunder: Bill Rabbit?

Mitchell: Well, actually I didn't know Bill or Donald Vann, either one. I'm talking about the earlier ones that were working more in the flat style.

Little Thunder: Cecil Dick, maybe?

Mitchell: Right. Their work influenced me. Of course, Donald and I, we have a lot of the same colors and stuff in our skies. I think his work has always 28:00interested me because of the sky techniques that he did. It took me a while to find my own little niche because of the influence of everybody and trying to develop your own technique. It's worked quite well for me.

Little Thunder: Did you ever run into prejudice, sort of?

Mitchell: Well, it's kind of funny you brought that up. Of course, you can tell by my complexion I look more white than I do Indian, so growing up, I never had any prejudism, even staying there in Locust Grove. I didn't realize that there was prejudice against Indians, even at an early age. I mean, my nickname was Snowball, but, you know, I didn't ever think--. The Indian kids weren't being 29:00prejudiced in that aspect. It was just something--we all had nicknames back then. I had white hair and pale skin; why not be Snowball? That was a good nickname. It wasn't until I was an adult that I was out West and saw the prejudism against, and the racism against the Pueblo people and the Navajo people in that region.

When I was doing art shows, and I first doing my Indian artwork, I was traveling a lot. I was doing some mall shows, and we were traveling up in Montana and Wyoming. That was the first time I actually ever had prejudism of being an Indian that was directly against me that I actually felt it. I was in Great Falls, Montana, and I'd walked away from my booth, and a friend of mine was there, was watching my booth. I come back, and he was talking to this couple there, obviously a well-to-do rancher from the area. I didn't want to interrupt 30:00the conversation because I thought, "We might get a sale here," you know.

I heard the conversation, and the guy says, "Well, is he Indian?" My friend said, "Well, yeah, but you're darker than he is." The guy says, "It doesn't matter. I won't buy from a damn Indian," and he turned around and walked off. I went, "Oh, my God." That was the first time that I actually felt that there was a prejudice. Sometimes out West, I've felt almost a reverse prejudism from the other Native people because of our mixed background. One of our Cherokee Treasures, potter, Mitchell, what was her first--I can't remember.

Little Thunder: Anna.

Mitchell: Anna Mitchell, she said something that I got a kick out of one time. We were at a meeting, and somebody had brought up the fact that Plains Indians were making fun of us, the fact that we'd been intermarrying. She got up, and 31:00she says, "I know these people. I show with them. You know what? They're marrying white people, too. In a hundred years, we can laugh at them." (Laughs) I loved it. I thought that was the greatest comment on prejudism or reverse racism that I've ever heard.

Little Thunder: What changes did you notice in the art scene starting in the ʼ80s to the ʼ90s?

Mitchell: I really lucked out. I came into the Indian arts and crafts business at a very fortunate time. It was 1988 when I first really started doing full-time as a Native artist. There in the ʼ90s, we had Dances With Wolves come out. They were filming The Last of the Mohicans, and everybody was trying to trace their native roots, whether they were or not. It was like a boom time, so 32:00that was a great period of time.

Of course, 9/11 actually stopped that boom. It was just like [snaps], and we haven't recovered from it yet. Native American artwork is still just, we're struggling. I see the jewelers seem to be doing a little bit better, which is always a good sign because they always recover. My observation is they always recovered faster than two-dimensional work. If we can get the women starting wearing Indian jewelry again, they'll start buying Indian artwork again to go with their jewelry.

Little Thunder: Sometimes the business part of art is the trickiest to figure out. It kind of seems like you did that with the non-Native subject matter, but how did you deal with the business side of doing Native art?

Mitchell: Fortunately, the business end of it really wasn't that much different. 33:00That is probably one of the hardest things for an artist to do. It's alien to us, for us to do it. I mean, that's completely opposite from the creative end of it. I've been told that I do it quite well. I learned at an early period in my art career that galleries, dealers, all of this is an important part of our system, and I always tried to have a good association with my art galleries, with wholesalers, and dealers, and wholesale markets.

I actually even opened a little art gallery in Oklahoma City for about a year, which gave me--I never made any money at it, but it gave me an insight into the problems that the gallery owners have. A lot of the artists can't comprehend why we have the pay the gallery owners so much money. Their overhead makes ours look 34:00puny. Their advertising cost alone sometimes equals our show budget, and a lot of times they really aren't making that much off of us. I agree that it seems that way, but you also have to design your artwork so you can wholesale.

There's a lot of artists out there that are wholesaling to the public, and they can't wholesale to the gallery because they don't understand the cost of materials and cost of goods. When you design a product, you have to have it so you can wholesale it and still make a profit. If you can't, then you got to find another product. I've been fortunate that I'm a very versatile person. I can change quickly. I've changed styles numerous times over the years. I've done sculpture work. I've done paintings. I do pen-and-ink drawings. I feel very 35:00fortunate that I can do this. I have to be careful and not do too much of it. The public has a hard time accepting that we can do more than one thing.

Little Thunder: You've done some really creative, I think, presentations, also, of prints. I'm thinking that I remember seeing the mat work and things that were--do you cut your own mats?

Mitchell: I do, right. I do all my own matting and framing. When the computer mat cuts first started coming out, that really challenged me. I felt that I could hand-cut a mat not near as quick but just as creative, and I came up with some very interesting pieces. I caught myself going, "Wait a minute. I'm spending as much or more time on these silly mats as I did the original. There's 36:00got to be a point of stopping," but it was fun to do those for a while. The latest thing that I've been doing with my framing is a technique that I came up with about a year ago in my pen-and-ink drawings.

I'm actually introducing a dimensional element in the framed pieces. I actually do the pen-and-ink drawing or an ink and watercolor piece. Then I cut a mat. Then I put a piece of glass over that mat and do another drawing, and then put another mat over that, and then frame it with another glass over it. What happens is that outer glass reflects all your reflections away, and the inner glass disappears so all you have is this drawing, floating above the existing drawing.

Little Thunder: I think we're going to get to look at one of those here in a minute.

Mitchell: It's a challenging technique, but I get bored easy, and I love to 37:00challenge myself. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: In 1990 the Indian Arts and Crafts Act was passed, requiring artists to have proof of enrollment or a letter from their tribe, certifying that they could represent that tribe as an artist. Do you remember how that impacted galleries and individuals?

Mitchell: Well, that act actually was just a redetermination of an earlier act passed in the 1930s. It did impact some people who did not or could not prove their heritage. That's unfortunate, but laws generally, as we know in this country, are made for the majority of the people. I was fortunate that my family had always maintained our tribal ties and that it was quite easy for me to prove 38:00my heritage. I've had a lot of discussions with other people that unfortunately couldn't prove their heritage. What they couldn't, or at least the way I perceived it, is they could not--that it's a political thing, not a race thing.

When I'm a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, that means just like someone would be citizen of France or a citizen of Germany. It doesn't mean that they're not German or French or English anymore. It just means that they're not a citizen. Because of the fraudulent practices that were coming in from out of the country, these laws and stuff had to be strengthened in order to protect our Native 39:00history and culture, or they would not exist anymore.

Any good artist, (I firmly believe this) if they want to be an artist, they don't have to be. Even if I couldn't prove I was Native American, I'd still be out there doing art. I still could do Native American artwork. I just couldn't claim it was done by a Native American. I probably would have changed my subject and gone into something contemporary or something else, but I think a good, creative artist, that shouldn't limit them.

Little Thunder: What's been one of the best comments or responses you've gotten when you've been showing your art?

Mitchell: Oh, gosh, I think generally when they find out that I'm red-green colorblind, it's difficult for them to comprehend how I perceive things and how 40:00it actually comes about. I always think that, Then anytime anybody identifies the Oriental influence of my work, I always love that. I mean, that is probably the best compliment you can give me is that "Gee, that kind of reminds me of Oriental work," because of that early influence.

Little Thunder: That stylization.

Mitchell: Right.

Little Thunder: I think one new vein you've been exploring recently is what you call contemporary ledger art, where you're using old pages from the Cherokee Phoenix or old Cherokee maps and then doing figures on them. Can you talk about how you got that idea?

Mitchell: Well, that idea actually started on my way back from a show back East. 41:00Me and John Guthrie were coming back to Oklahoma together. We were sitting there talking about, just feeding ideas off of each other, and we were trying to think of a new way to do the Trail of Tears, a different way that hadn't been done.

Little Thunder: That specific category you're talking about--

Mitchell: Right.

Little Thunder: --at the Trail of Tears art show.

Mitchell: We were talking about [Andrew] Jackson, who was responsible for the Trail of Tears, and the twenty dollar bill, the fact that Jackson's picture was on it. I came up with the idea of incorporating the Trail of Tears on a twenty dollar bill. I enlarged the twenty dollar bill up, which is legal as long as it's not, you know, and then I did a painting of the Trail of Tears at the bottom of it. It was called Jackson's Legacy. That was the first contemporary ledger piece that I did because it wasn't done in the traditional Plains style 42:00ledger, but still it was done on a document.

It's been so well received. As a matter of fact, it was bought by the Indian Museum in Wichita, Kansas, as part of their permanent collection. The original actually has the twenty dollar bill in it. That was an interesting story in itself because I wanted a twenty dollar bill to tie in to the Trail of Tears. I went to coin shop after coin shop, trying to find a twenty dollar bill that was printed back in 1835, or something from Tahlequah, or something from Chattanooga, or something. Finally, this one coin dealer says, "If you found something like that, it would be extremely rare and very, very expensive."

I was really disheartened. I was going, "I'm just not going to find a twenty like I want." I was walking out of the store, and this twenty dollar bill--you've heard of that where something will reach out and grab you? Something grabbed my attention, and I turned around and walked back into the 43:00store. I looked at this twenty, and I went, "Oh, my God." It was issued in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1935.

Little Thunder: Eighteen thirty-five or nineteen thirty-five?

Mitchell: Nineteen thirty-five. That was the hundredth anniversary of the first law the State of Georgia passed against the Cherokees that led to the Trail of Tears. Later I found out it was the first year that Jackson had been put on a twenty. All of that came--that was my twenty, and that's what really started it. I started looking at these other documents, trying to see how I could do it. Of course, going back to that little satirical humor that I developed back in the oil boom days, I naturally had to start injecting that into it. The Declaration of Independence, wow, here's another one for the Trail of Tears. The Constitution, influenced by Native people, Franklin and Jefferson both said it 44:00was influenced by Natives; there's another one.

There's document after document. I keep finding them going, "Wow, how can I incorporate this?" About a year ago, the Cherokee Nation commissioned several artists to do guitars, paint guitars. Well, there was no way to transfer a document to that guitar. I tried. I tried decoupaging the Declaration on it, and it just didn't work. I ended up hand-painting a copy of a Revolutionary War map on there with two Cherokees on it, on the map. That's kind of the first time that I actually had to do my own document. Now there's several of them that I've done recently, that I've actually had to do my own document.

Little Thunder: Now, was this a casino commission?

Mitchell: This was, yeah, it was for the Hard Rock Casino there. That guitar is 45:00in the permanent collection there in the, not the cafeteria, one of the restaurants. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Right. I'm going to have to look for that. (Laughs) You publish an online newsletter, I noticed, which involves writing as well as design work and layout. How did you get the idea to do a newsletter?

Mitchell: I've been, I've tried several different communication ways with the digital age. I had to learn to use the computer to do my own printing. I didn't like Facebook or any of those social medias because, one reason, I just really don't have time to deal with the pettiness of a lot of that, but I wanted a way of communicating to my customers and to the other people around me what I was 46:00doing and what was going on. Now, previously in the ʼ70s and ʼ80s, I'd put out brochures or updated little flyers that I'd send out occasionally. It was basically a hard-copy newsletter. Well, I came up with the idea of doing a digital. Ideally, I'd love to do it every month. Unfortunately, like this last time, it was three months before I got around to doing it, but I had six paintings I had to get out for the Cherokee Nation. I got six commissions for paintings for their Veterans Center, and I just got those finished up. That was the main subject matter of this last newsletter. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Well, congratulations on that.

Mitchell: Thank you.

Little Thunder: You won First Place in 2012 in the Trail of Tears category, I guess, at the Cherokee Museum Art Show--

Mitchell: Yes.

Little Thunder: --and you've won a lot of awards. Does that change the feeling 47:00when you win?

Mitchell: When I first started out in the ʼ70s, awards were very important to me as a young artist. Oh, that was a heck of an ego booster. Sometime during those years, making money was more important to me because it was the only source of income our family had, and the awards really took a back seat. It was until just recently, actually after I moved back over here into the Cherokee Nation, had a lot of life-changing situations that had happened, that I got interested--well, I had a heart attack last year. It really, kind of a wake-up call. I ended up with triple-bypass, and I really cut back on my show schedule a 48:00lot. It's not that important for me to be making money anymore. I mean, we all need to make money, but I'm comfortable with my income that I have now. Making money at the shows isn't as important, so I find myself again, full circle, back to the beginning again, excited about the competitions. Now the pieces are more inspired by trying to come up with something unique to compete with, rather than come up with something that will sell.

Little Thunder: That's neat. Well, let's talk about your process and techniques a little bit more. Do you work with, in terms of your originals when they're not pen-and-inks, when they're paintings, are they primarily gouache, or a mixture 49:00of gouache and ink, or are they acrylic paintings?

Mitchell: I work in all three medias. I do pen-and-inks; I do a mixed-media of ink and watercolor; I do gouache; and I do acrylics. The gouache and the watercolors and the acrylics are done using that flat style, but I also use a lot of airbrush techniques in my work. You'll see a lot of hard-edge work in it that resembles stencil work. That's actually one-of-a-kind stencil done for that airbrush, that I actually do right on top of the painting. I actually hand-cut it out with an X-Acto knife, so it's unique one-of-a-kind stencil work using the airbrush. I started using the airbrush when I started doing my skies to get the cloud effects and everything.

Little Thunder: Right, and you mentioned that you've tried your hand at sculpture?

Mitchell: Yeah, I've always loved three-dimensional work. Even back in the early days, I played with some polymer clay sculptures back in the ʼ70s, just some little miniatures. It was more just an exercise to relax my mind from the two-dimensional because a lot of my work is so technical it really becomes intricate, mentally consuming. Working with the sculpture kind of relaxes me, and it gives me another direction to go with this creative work. When I was living in Prague, a friend of mine was a welder. He broke his leg and couldn't work full-time anymore. He'd done a few little craft shows with just some little basic cut-out steel stuff. I approached Harold--he's a Seminole. I approached him, and I said, "Harold, I've got these three-dimensional ideas. I'll work with 51:00you with this. You do the metal work. I'll give you the ideas. I'll show you."

We worked side-by-side there for a while. He was using a plasma torch to cut the pieces out and everything. One day I designed this piece that he just couldn't grasp. It was a positive-negative space, and he couldn't grasp negative space. He was messing it up, and I said, "Give me that torch! It looks like a big clumsy airbrush. I can do that." He kind of warned me a little bit, but he stepped back, and I started cutting out. He looked at me, and he says, "I've never seen anybody just pick up a torch and start cutting like that." I said, "It's just like this big clumsy airbrush, except I've got to remember not to put my hand there to shade it, to block some of the torch out with." That's really how I got into doing the metal work, and fortunately worked with Harold for quite a few years.

Little Thunder: Are these the source of some of the lamps?

Mitchell: Lamps and some of the war shields that we did. Then I actually did, 52:00the last pieces I did, I did a wood base like a pedestal and built the sculpture on it, so it was a free-standing metal work. The reason that was done is when you enter into competition, if you enter a wall piece that's metal, they lay it on a table because they don't have hanging space for the metal. It just doesn't show the work off, so I came up with this idea that was, "I'll just build my own wall!" (Laughs) I tried easels at first, but they wouldn't, you know, that was clumsy. When I downsized and everything, I had to give up my metal work. I do have plans to start picking up and doing the polymer clay sculptures again. Like I said, it's a nice diversion from doing all that real technical-type work.

Little Thunder: How important is preliminary sketching to your work?

Mitchell: Oh, gosh, that's the basis. Drawing is the basis to all art. I go through tons of tracing paper. I approach it much like a commercial artist does. I'll do a rough layout; I'll overlay it, clean it up. I'll overlay that overlay. I keep making overlays of previous overlays until I come up with a final layout. Because my work is so technical, you've got to know where everything is going to go before you start. You can't just randomly approach a piece and let the color dominate your direction and everything, composition. You've got to plan it all out. Now, I realize some artists work quite well the other way. I don't.

Little Thunder: What kinds of research do you do for your paintings?

Mitchell: Historical research is very important to me. I try not to make historical mistakes. I've made a few over the years, and it's made me more observant on these things. As a matter of fact, Allan Houser, well-known sculptor, actually pointed out a mistake to me in I think it was '89, I believe. I was doing a show in Albuquerque, and I didn't recognize him. He walked up to my booth. I was set up in front of Sheplers there in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and this little, short Indian comes up to me and starts talking to me. We're talking for a quite a while, and he pointed out a little mistake I made. I said, "Oh, do you do artwork?" and he says "Oh, I dabble in it." As he walked away, 55:00all of a sudden I realized who it was, too late! It was Allan Houser of all people! "Do you do any artwork?" "Oh, I dabble in it." (Laughs)

That was great, but in a way that was kind of embarrassing, too. He was so nice about it. He could have really made an issue about it. It's important to me. I have a small library of research books that I've purchased over the years. Of course, now I use the computer to go online sometimes when I run into--my daughter keeps reminding me when I come up with some idea or something, she says, "Well go online." I went, "Oh, yeah!" I still think you have to go to the library, you have to go to a book. It's like recently one of the questions, a technical question, that's been bothering me for a long time, I've inquired 56:00several times trying to find the origin of why the Cherokees started wearing turbans. This question that I was asking is where the turbans originated from. I've got some theories, but I have not substantiated those theories.

They started wearing them there in the late 1700s, early 1800s. That was after the Cherokees had been taken to England and introduced into the court as royalty. At that time, England was a world power, and they would have had representatives from around the world, including people from India and Africa who would've worn turbans. Or because we were slave owners, some of the African slaves that we would have owned would have worn turbans. Those are two possibilities that would have influenced it. I would like to think it was the English court, but I have not found any documentation to prove otherwise. My 57:00daughter said, "Well, go online and find out," which I haven't done yet, but I will. (Laughs) Little things like that. It's the curiosity of "why" sometimes.

Little Thunder: You've kind of touched on why veterans themes are important to you, too, but I wonder if there's any more to say on that.

Mitchell: Yes, this was a good opportunity that came up recently when the Cherokee Nation opened a competition to get commissions for the new Veterans Center. I'm a US Air Force veteran. I was in there in '63 to '65. My dad was a World War II veteran. He'd actually gone into the Army in 1938. He was in the Battle of Dutch Harbor, which was when Japan attacked Wake Island, the Battle of 58:00Midway there. Not Wake Island. It was the Battle of Midway. They actually had a diversionary attack, and Dad's company, they had one company up there at Dutch Harbor. That was the only thing between Japan and the United States. The stories he's told me about that--. Matter of fact, I've been working on a project for the last couple of years. Hopefully, I get to work on it again this year. The story of my dad at Dutch Harbor is a graphic novel I'm working on. Hopefully when it gets completed, I'll present it over there to our Veterans Center. Maybe they'll include a copy of the book in there.

Little Thunder: Neat. You mentioned humor in your work, and a lot of times I'll find humor in some of your titles. How do you come up with your titles?

Mitchell: Titles are probably the most interesting things to come up with. 59:00Generally the titles are after the paintings. I know a lot of people come up with the subject matter and titles at first, but mine usually come at the end. One of my most popular sources of titles are movies. During the oil boom days, I used a lot of Clint Eastwood titles. High Plains Driller. Drifter became the High Plans [Driller]. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly became The Good, the Bad and the Greedy. A Few Dollars More, A Fistful of Dollars.

Today I use a lot of music. I'll go through record albums, going through their names and stuff because when you've been doing shows and artwork as long as I have, you hate to keep using the same titles. As a Cherokee, we are guilty of doing a lot of Trail of Tears pieces, (I fully admit that, at least I am) but 60:00how many of them can you keep calling Trail of Tears? It's always trying to, okay, "How can I call this the Trail of Tears but not call it--with a new twist on the same name?" It's always a challenge like that. But music, I'll go through those music titles, and a lot of times I'll come up with, "That's a good title. Now how can I tie this into my painting?" (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You have a really elaborate signature, actually, because it's the Oklahoma flag, as I understand it, the logo, but you add your initials or your full name to it.

Mitchell: Yeah, that grew over the years. My family name is Foreman, and when I first started doing shows, I did four little horsemen, four men. Well, on my mother's side is Rainwater, which is another Cherokee family, but our side of 61:00the Rainwaters quit being Cherokee in the 1900s because they stayed in Georgia too long, not by choice, but, you know. I had this little raincloud above these four horsemen, rainwater. I kept elaborating on it, and it is influenced a lot by the Oklahoma flag seal. It does resemble that quite a lot. The circle around it represents the circle or unity of the family or tribe, so I set the four horsemen inside this circle representing the tribe. The shield itself is a seven-sided shield representing the seven-sided Council House of the Cherokee Nation, so now I have the four men, the family and a tribe, and the Council House. But my work is influenced by the Plains flat style, so I put a flat style, a Plains flute on it, and I hang seven feathers, representing the seven 62:00clans of the Cherokee Nation. That developed over about five years.

Little Thunder: And it's a mini-painting.

Mitchell: Yes.

Little Thunder: What is your creative process from the time you get an idea?

Mitchell: The idea development takes considerably longer than the painting. I'm a rather fast painter or illustrator because basically a lot of my work is illustrations, but it's the idea and putting it into a two-dimensional form. That's the most time-consuming thing. A lot of times it just starts with an abstract thought or concept, or sometimes it's just out of the blue like the twenty dollar bill inspiring that one piece. Like a lot of creative people, the 63:00solutions to these concepts happens early morning. There's been numerous times that I've solved my problem in my sleep. I wake up at three or four in the morning, and the idea's there. I have to get up and write down how I solved that particular problem.

Sometimes it's just a smart remark another person's made. A few years ago, I was working on a piece, a transitional piece. I wanted to show an Eagle Dancer changing to an eagle. That transitional phase where the two images overlap each other is probably the most difficult part of that type of work. I was having a real difficult time solving it. An artist friend of mine, she said, "Why don't 64:00you just put the rear-end of the eagle on his face?" She was just being facetious, trying to be a little smart aleck. She walked away. I looked at it, and, by God, it solved the problem. If you see the final painting, you'll see that basically his head is where the eagle's butt is. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What's your creative routine? Do you paint more during the day, at night?

Mitchell: I've trained myself to be more of a daytime painter. I know when I first started, it was more of a evening. I seemed to work best, like, from one or two in the afternoon to midnight. Now my most productive time is if I can get started in the morning. If I can't get started, it's hard for me to start anytime during the day. Now, once I get started, I can work ten, twelve, 65:00fourteen hours, but maybe this has to do with age, too. (Laughs) I wake up earlier now than I used to and go to bed earlier, so it's a good thing I can paint earlier in the morning now.

Little Thunder: Looking back on your career so far, what was a fork-in-the-road moment for you where you might have gone one way but you went another?

Mitchell: Probably the Air Force. If they had put me into something that would have utilized my artistic abilities instead of sticking me in the air police, I probably would've made a career out of the Air Force, but fortunately they stuck me in that, which caused me to take that other road, that eventually led down to technical illustration to that job in Oklahoma City, that led the Oklahoma City Arts Festival, that led to this.

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

Mitchell: Well, being in it for forty-two years is those recessions. I've gone through several recessions, and the last one is the most devastating. It was probably the most devastating because not only did, financially, I lose a lot, my wife passed away. I had a heart attack. It was a combination of a lot of negative things. Of course, the positive thing is, is now I'm living back in the Cherokee Nation. I'm doing what I love to do, and I'm not under any financial pressures that I have to get out there and sell something. Those negatives 67:00do--but it makes a stronger person out of you, I believe.

Little Thunder: How about a high point?

Mitchell: Oh, the high points, gosh. I guess one of the first ones was my first thousand-dollar show. It was 1973, the Kansas City Plaza Show. I did a little over eleven hundred dollars. In 1973, that's a lot of money. I remember my wife and I got back to the motel. We were pulling--of course, back then, the most expensive piece I had in the booth was $150, so we were selling a lot of ten- and twenty-dollar items. We had a bed pile of tens and twenties on this bed. It looked like we were rich, and we felt like we were rich. (Laughter) How easy that thousand dollars now wouldn't amount to a hill of beans, but that was 68:00probably one of the most wonderful feelings.

Recognition by your peers, by the public, that's always just, is so good. We've got to have our egos stroked once in a while. Those awards. The ultimate compliment, I've always said, is when you buy a piece of artwork from me, is that you take your hard-earned money and you're actually doing something that I've sat there and painted. Sometimes it amazes me that people will do that (Laughs) because I'll go home and paint it. I won't pay somebody money--I shouldn't say that. I've bought other artwork over the years when they wouldn't trade. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we look 69:00at a couple of examples of your work, anything we forgot to mention?

Mitchell: Oh, gosh, so much happened over the last forty-two years, it'd be hard for me to try to single out any one item during that period of time. I think we've hit on the highlights of it. That's all I think we could hope to do. Otherwise, we'd have to get a lot longer film. It'd make a motion picture out of it.

Little Thunder: Okay, we're going to pause here a moment and get your work set up. So what would you like to share with us about your sculpture here?

Mitchell: This is a polymer clay sculpture that's a low-fired clay. This was done a few years ago. This is media that I'm going to start working in again. This is about nine inches tall, and it's of Da Tsi (Tah Chee) [Carpenter]. He was also known as "Dutch." He came with his parents to Indian Territory after the War of 1812 and became basically an Indian fighter and guide. He fought the Kiowas, the Comanches. He became a really skilled fighter and later led different military expeditions all over Oklahoma. He became one of our Cherokee leaders after the Trail of Tears, too, because he actually worked with the new people when they came. That's one of the first pieces I did with this much detail in it.

Little Thunder: Yes, it's got wonderful detail. And how about this piece?

Mitchell: Okay, this is a gouache painting of Osceola, famous Seminole war chief. He fought during the Seminole wars and resisted the Trail of Tears. It was the beginning--I'd set out to do a series of warriors from each one of the Five Civilized Tribes. Unfortunately, I've never got around to the other four yet, but that gives me something to do in the future. This was using airbrush and dry brush techniques. You can see the background is using that airbrush technique, where I use the trees in a very simple form, a block printing type element, then use the dry brush technique and the flat style in the figure where I do all the detail work.

Little Thunder: Right. That's really nice.

Mitchell: He's real famous for that, supposedly stabbing a knife into the treaty in rejection. I wanted this knife to be a three-dimensional effect instead of actually going where he's shoving it right in your face instead of down on the table like it would really historically happen. I took a few liberties with history here on this one.

Little Thunder: Right. (Laughs) Well, thank you for your time today.

Mitchell: You're welcome. We didn't talk about role playing.

Little Thunder: We didn't. Do you want to add that as a post script?

Mitchell: Yeah! When I first started doing art shows, the public intimidated me a little bit, I suppose, or maybe I was just a little bit on the bashful side. I decided that--I don't know that it was a conscious decision, but I role-played. I started assuming a figure, highly influenced by The High Plains Drifter. The Clint Eastwood movie was out. The black hat, the long black--. I had a black duster custom made for one of the shows that I'd gone to, so I started wearing all black. I had dark tinted glasses and this black hat. I'd walk around with a real stern face because I just didn't really know how to react. One example is I was walking through one of my early shows in this all-black outfit, and three women that knew me real well, they went, "Ronny, smile!"

I turned around. I went, "Damn it, I am smiling." Of course, I had to get around the corner real quick because I cracked up laughing. (Laughter) The reaction I got from them was great, so I just kept creating this character until one day I woke up and I realized, "Wait a minute. I am him!" I wasn't creating somebody. I was letting him out of the box. This character that I thought I was creating was real me. So now today I no longer have to use those props like the cowboy hat, the dark glasses, the dark black. I've still got dark clothes on, but--. I'm comfortable relating to people, but those early days, that really helped me a lot to be able to communicate. Once I figured it out, it was, "Wait a minute. They're on my turf. I'm in control here, not them." Then it was a lot easier for me to talk with the public.

Little Thunder: Well, thank you for sharing that story.

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