2022 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 230
230
Dan Mieduch (b. 1947)
The Spirits of the Shadows Play Tricks (2022)
oil on board
24 × 36 inches
signed and dated lower left
The artist writes, “There are many variations among the Native tribes of trickster spirits and the various forms they take. Most often they become fox or raven and their purpose is to teach important lessons, kind of like the fables of Aesop.
“And, like any good fable, they haunt the memory with warnings ‘not to take things at face value,’ they are metaphorical, so as to be able to embody themselves in a multitude of animate forms.
“To these Lakota youths, the movements of the trees and their deceptive shadows on the rippling stream bed could easily appear as trickster spirits behaving in a capricious mood.”