About the artist

I was born in Glendale, Ca in 1971. In 1993 I graduated with a BFA from UC Berkeley. I now live in Berkeley, CA, with my daughter. My grandfather, Chief Terry Saul , a formidable Choctaw painter and illustrator passed along his name and his paint brushes to me. In Los Angeles, my original stomping ground, there sits a stucco-coated house, topped by what appears to be a magical Tori gate, on a street with no name, surrounded by journalists and the Angeles National Forest, where mud slides collect power.

Now, in the empty nest, my father plays Dobro ,a lap-sitting, resonator guitar played with finger picks and a slide. In the 70's he studied photography with Edmund Teske. He continues to practice and teach photography, sharing a website with Mama Saul. My mother is a painter and sculptor, recently elected VP of Exhibitions for Pasadena Society of Artists. My older brother is a fast-talking wrestling sailor. My infantile and most profound influences include — nudity , hippy poets , terriers, guinea pigs, rabbits, pencils, S.I., reporters, political cartoons, college radio, small motorcycles, splinters, whales, tribal ancestors, punk rock , beach-combers, little earthquakes , hanging chairs, pinecones, helicopters, green vegetables, Elmer's Glue, the cries of wild peacocks, flameproof pajamas, Orion, footage of Vietnam, bamboo wall-coverings, the Santa Ana winds, knickers, Reaganomics, Carl Sagan, nihilism, Nuclear War, coffee, bedposts, Dada, Rothko, Guston, closets, and High School Greco-Roman Wrestlers.

Favorite artists include — Martin Mcmurray, Philip Guston, James Ensor, Luc Tuymans, Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Lucien Freud, Stanley Spencer, Katharina Fritsch, Francisco Goya, Louise Bourgeois, Jean Dubuffet , Paul Klee, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Marcel Duchamp, Bill Traylor, Joan Miro, Georg Baselitz, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Vija Celmins, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and various Pacific Northwest and Inuit Artists.

Work has been sold through the following galleries: Women and Their Work in Austin, Texas, Texas Fine Arts Association, now called Arthouse at the Jones Center, in Austin, Texas, Worth Ryder Art Gallery at UCBerkeley in Berkeley, California, Bucheon Gallery in San Francisco, California.

About the Bicycling Series

The bicycling series touches on familial influences, in particular the art of my grandfather, Chief Terry Saul, a Choctaw painter, illustrator, and peyotist, albeit in a free-form and unregimented fashion. For me these pieces are about two impossible childhood fantasies, both dreams of a kind of manhood that didn't yet seem off limits: being a fancy dancer on the Pow Wow circuit, and racing in the Tour de France. On a broader level, the series attempts to challenge conceptions of normality by juxtaposing two alien traditions that come together and even fuse at unexpected points of contact: the colorful regalia of the performers, stoicism and feats of athleticism leading to transcendence, ritual movement within the context of the natural landscape, the individual's realization of a "dream" that becomes truth by way of communal performance.

The characters' riding gear and dress don't belong to any one tradition or tribe in particular, or to one time period or sport (some of the references are to early Tour de France equipment). Fantasies are not altered by growing pains, distractions, accidents, gender roles, or historical truth, but rather follow a shaman's spirit. Hopefully and not least, these pieces also capture an aspect of tribal culture that is too often ignored in westernized conceptions of the "Indian": our rich and even phantasmagorical senses of humor. This work is experimental in nature, and will continue to grow in meaning as time passes.

*Thank you to David Sepanik for help with editing and writing this statement, and for inspiration and support during the painting of the bicycle series.

~Terri Saul, 2007

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