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“Knows Her Medicine Crow Indian” by Kevin Red Star (Apsáalooke/Crow American) - Acrylic on canvas / 1981 - Denver Art Museum (Colorado) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #DenverArtMuseum #KevinRedStar #RedStar #IndigenousWomen #Crow #Apsaalooke #PortraitofaWoman #indigeneousArt #NativeAmericanArt
A Crow (Apsáalooke) woman sits centered with her body turned only slightly as her face meets ours with a steady, composed gaze. Her skin is warm brown and her hair is parted and braided into two long plaits, the lower lengths wrapped for ceremony. She wears an elk-tooth cloak rendered in bold black, covered with dozens of pale, oval “teeth” that catch the light and suggest movement and sound. Bright red cuffs, collar, and a wide belt stand out while small white accents appear in her earrings and beadwork. Her hands are painted noticeably larger than her head and torso, resting in the foreground like an emphasized statement. She sits on a modern red chair before a flat wall, while a tipi scene in a frame appears behind her depicting it beneath a round moon (or sun). Heavy outlining and speckled paint spatters keep attention on the surface, making the portrait feel both intimate and monumental. Apsáalooke (Crow Nation) artist Kevin Red Star builds portraits that honor Crow life while refusing a single, fixed time. The Denver Art Museum notes that his figures can be assembled from multiple sources including old photographs, historic tribal enrollment rolls, and images he makes at ceremonies and feasts, so name, clothing, and setting can come from different moments. Here, the modern chair and ambiguous “window” of tipis place the sitter in the present while she wears tradition. The elk teeth (each one tied on individually in real regalia) signal value, skill, and community history. By enlarging them, Red Star makes their cultural importance impossible to overlook. He also uses a sun or moon as a Crow symbol to give the sense that his people are “planted,” even when the space feels like it might float. The deliberate distortion of the hands grants authority and presence, as if knowledge and care are literally what we meet first. Red Star, raised on the Crow Reservation and trained in formal painting, said you have to “know what you’re breaking before you break it.”
January 19, 2026 at 6:17 PM