Points Connecting

JOHN R. STOMBERG, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director 

Dan Namingha's family includes many artists, both historically and in the present with his children (Arlo Namingha is a sculptor and Michael Namingha is a photographer). His painting career spans almost half a century, and his style blends a modernist aesthetic with Hopi and Hopi-Tewa spirituality. Long known for Southwestern-hued landscapes that embrace geometric compositional motifs, he has also cultivated a practice in abstraction. Of his recent abstract work, he says: "My series of Points Connecting paintings serves as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of our universe . . . These abstract compositions are not a literal image of our universe, but rather a metaphoric statement reflecting universal balance."

In this work, Namingha paints many different forms in multiple colors, suggesting the importance of both geometry and art theory to the composition. His intent, however, is far more metaphysical than compositional. Each of his forms connects to another across the entire canvas; as different as each shape or area is, they are all therefore linked. His painting is a hopeful acknowledgment that everyone—no matter how far apart in beliefs or geography—is interconnected somehow.

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