"David Johns is a Navajo man. His native world of the Southwest and of Arizona is ineffably rich in myth and meaning, history and prehistory, language and literature. And everywhere it is informed with sacred matter"
That David Johns is a Navajo man, a native man in a literal and definitive sense, and an artist of real distinction, is an equation that defines an important tradition in American art. Just as there is no American literature without the rich oral tradition of the American Indian, so there is no visual art that is distinctively American without Indian antecedents.
From rock paintings that are thousands of years old to prehistoric pottery..to the ledger-book drawings of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth-century watercolors of the Plains and Pueblos to the works of such notable contemporary painters as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Fritz Scholder, David Bradley, and David Johns, there is an integrity and continuity in American Indian art that is unique and indispensable"
David Johns is a seer, and he comes very honestly by that gift. In his remarkable artwork, he enables us to see as well. His gift becomes our gift. Here is the essential spirit of creation.
N.Scott Momaday, artist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner.
Excerpt from his foreword for the book : Lois and Jerry Jacka David Johns on the trail of beauty, 1991, Snailspace Publishing,Inc.
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