• ARTWORK

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s talent for visual art is an extension of her accomplishments as musician, teacher and activist. She has been creating digital art since 1984. The digital work in 16 Million Colours traces her career from the earliest version of Mac Paint to the present. Sainte-Marie realized the potential of computers as artistic tools early in the onset of the computer age. She is an authority on the changes and trends in technology that have become integral to our daily life.

All areas of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s artistic projects are marked by an originality and fearless diversity. The pieces in 16 Million Colours are personal to Sainte-Marie’s extraordinary experiences but engage the viewer with their unique, strange beauty.

This collection challenges preconceptions of computerized art with their meticulous technique and style. She refers to her Macintosh computer as an art tool. Sainte-Marie’s art references the 1970’s psychedelic aesthetic but are strikingly contemporary.

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s work is relevant to important trends in art as well as culture. Working within emerging technologies she very early combined photography, wet painting, pointillism- pixelation, abstract and realism techniques into intensely contemporary statements of colour, line and subject matter that draw from her artist’s love of design, dance, animals and Aboriginal cultures. Although more than half the images in this collection are about other subjects, her emotional portrayals of Aboriginal themes are like nothing ever seen before, alive and thriving within the digital shift.

The work in 16 Million Colours is comprised of 11 mostly large-scale images produced on Kodak Endura Metallic and watercolour paper.

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s work is in the permanent collections of the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, First Nations University, and the Tucson Art Museum, and has been exhibited at the Glenbow Museum, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Isaacs Gallery, the Walter Phillips Gallery, the Gallery for Contemporary and Indigenous Art (Tuscon), The Winnipeg Art Gallery and Gurevich Fine Art (Winnipeg), and other galleries throughout North America.

» AN INTERVIEW WITH BUFFY : HOW DIGITAL ART IS MADE
» PAINTING WITH LIGHT : SPEECH EXCERPT

To inquire about purchasing Buffy Sainte-Marie’s art please contact
management@paquinentertainment.com

THE MOHAWK WARRIOR CONTEMPLATES HIS FUTURE   -   Ilfordchrome (Cibachrome) photograph. 37.5" x 37"   -   A teenage Mohawk man from waist up, his face and body painted with blacks in a traditional Mohawk way, but the image re-painted in a digital artist's way, in teal greens. He is surrounded by other versions of his potential self, in rich reds and browns.

THE MOHAWK WARRIOR CONTEMPLATES HIS FUTURE
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 37.5″ x 37″

A teenage Mohawk man from waist up, his face and body painted with blacks in a traditional Mohawk way, but the image re-painted in a digital artist’s way, in teal greens. He is surrounded by other versions of his potential self, in rich reds and browns.

YAYE JAGUAR   -   Details upon request

AYAHUASCA JAGUAR
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 40″ x 55″

An image of a Native elder looms above and inside a valley, in which tipis are visible. The colors are hot pinks and other bright hues, fragmented and pixelated. The atmosphere is one of Wisdom bearing witness to chaos and destruction.

PINK VILLAGE   -   Ilfordchrome (Cibachrome) photograph. 49" x 52.5"   -   An image of a Native elder looms above and inside a valley, in which tipis are visible. The colors are hot pinks and other bright hues, fragmented and pixelated. The atmosphere is one of Wisdom bearing witness to chaos and destruction.

PINK VILLAGE
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 49″ x 52.5″

An image of a Native elder looms above and inside a valley, in which tipis are visible. The colors are hot pinks and other bright hues, fragmented and pixelated. The atmosphere is one of Wisdom bearing witness to chaos and destruction.

YAQUI FROM THE WINGS   -   49 x 67 in.

YAQUI FROM THE WINGS
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 48″ x 60.37″

WESAKECHAK THE TRICKSTER
Printed on Premium Watercolour Paper, 27″ x 33.5″

This looks like a real black and white (greyscale) photograph of an impossible not quite human creature. The Trickster is described in countless Native legends as the sacred fool, who is in turn dangerous, obscene, and funny. My image which I call ‘the only known photo of the Trickster’ isn’t at all obscene, although there is something somewhat gluteus maximus about the face; but it is mostly curious. It is available as an Iris print; however, it can be installed backlit as a semi-opaque Ilfordchrome, framed in an old weathered window frame so that it appears he’s looking in the window of a reservation house. Life size.

NEON HULA  -  Ilfordchrome (Cibachrome) photograph. 49" x 67"                                       Three dancers in a dream, their bodies outlined in neon.

NEON HULA
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 67″ x 49″

Three dancers in a dream, their bodies outlined in neon.

SELF PORTRAIT - Ilfordchrome (Cibachrome) photograph. 33" x 45.5" - A photo was imported into my computer and I played with it. It is a headshot where I was wearing a lightweight veil; black hair, blackened background; and streaks of very interesting computer colors in some feathers.

SELF PORTRAIT
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 33″ x 45.5″

A photo was imported into my computer and I played with it. It is a headshot where I was wearing a lightweight veil; black hair, blackened background; and streaks of very interesting computer colors in some feathers.

HANDS: THE COMING OF THE DIGITAL AGE   -   Ilfordchrome (Cibachrome) photograph. 66" x 49"   -   A self portrait in deep greens and blues, and red and white. Very much pixelated. This image was used as the logo for the Pixel Pushers Exhibit of Digital Art at the Emily Carr College of Fine Art in Vancouver in June of 1994, and received rave reviews from Howard Rheingold, author of Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, and in the San Francisco Examiner

HANDS: THE COMING OF THE DIGITAL AGE
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 49″ x 66″

A self portrait in deep greens and blues, and red and white. Very much pixelated. This image was used as the logo for the Pixel Pushers Exhibit of Digital Art at the Emily Carr College of Fine Art in Vancouver in June of 1994, and received rave reviews from Howard Rheingold, author of Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, and in the San Francisco Examiner.

ELDER BROTHERS
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 49.5″ x 60.6″

An image of two young men who look like ghosts from 1880. They semi-appear amid a wild abstract background in rich metallic colors. Life size.

WOMAN WITH DOLPHINS   -   48 x 68.4 in.

WOMAN WITH DOLPHINS
Printed on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic VC Digital Paper, 68″ x 48″