Free Blue Ravens: Historical Novel by Gerald Vizenor Page A

Minneapolis Public Library.
    The same conductor was on the return streetcar and asked us about the art gallery. Aloysius told him about the window display, the bright fruit and red setters, and then described the watercolor scene of a beautiful Japanese woman in a garden of lilies.
    What does she look like?
    Her face was turned to the lilies.
    So, why was she beautiful?
    The elegance of her hands and feet crouched by the lilies, my brother explained to the conductor, but he was not convinced. We were touched by the mood and subtle hues of the watercolor. The Woman in the Garden was the only picture that was enticing and we wanted to be in the garden scene with that sensuous woman.
    Yamada Baske was standing at an easel with a student when we entered the studio. He smiled, bowed his head, and then turned to continue his discussion on the techniques of painting subtle hues of color, traces of reds and blues in watercolors. Baske told the student that the wash of blues was a natural trace of creation, a primal touch of ancient memories. The blues are a procession, he explained, and the turn of blues must be essential, the epitome and trace of natural hues of color.
    Aloysius was inspired by the chance discussion of colors, the hues of blue, and once again he flinched and turned shy. My brother was a visionary artist, and that was a native sense of presence not a practice. He had never studied any techniques of watercolor as a painter. So, when he heard an art teacher describe his own natural passion as a painter he became reserved and secretive.
    The contrast between visionary, mercenary, and gallery art was not easy to discuss with a learned painter. My brother created blue ravens as new totems, a natural visionary art, and for that reason the scenes he painted were never the same, and are not easily defined as a practice by teachers of art. There were no histories about blue ravens, no learned courses on new native totems. My brother was an original artist, and the images he created would change the notions of native art and the world. His native visions cannot be easily named, described, or compared by curators in art galleries.
    Aloysius mounted several of his blue ravens on the empty easels in thestudio. Yamada Baske studied the raven pictures from a distance, at first, and then he slowly moved closer to each image on the easels. He described the totemic images as native impressionism, an original style of abstract blue ravens.
    Baske was reviewed as an impressionist painter, and exhibition curators observed that he had been trained in the great traditional painting style of the Japanese. Later, in the library, we read that his watercolors conveyed a traditional composition, “but rendered with the airy, misty technique of the impressionists. In some ways this reflects completion of a circle of influence given that the impressionist movement was deeply influenced by Japanese art, particularly watercolors and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints.”
    Aloysius created blue ravens, an inspiration of natural scenes and original native totems, and one day his watercolors would be included in the stories told about abstract and impressionist painters. My brother would create the new totems of the natural world in visionary, fierce, and severe scenes.
    Baske was truly impressed by the pictures of the blue ravens. He moved from easel to easel, and then mounted more pictures to consider. He commented on the mastery of the blue hues, the subtle traces of motion, the natural stray of watercolor shadows, and the sense of presence in every scene of the ravens.
    The blue ravens are glorious, visionary, a natural watercolor creation, said Baske. He raised one hand and waved, a gesture of praise over the blue ravens on the easels, and then he turned to my brother, smiled, and bowed slightly.
    Aloysius opened his art book and painted a raven with wings widely spread over the studio easels, misty feathers tousled and astray, beak turned to the