Digital Art Sets The Great Spirit Free

Combining the intitive with the empirical, native Cree Buffy Sainte-Marie has created some digital art that reflects the deeply ingrained social relationship that First nations peoples have with nature and the land. Consumption of nature is seen as a social pact or organic consensus where nature ”gives of itself” in exchange for respect and preservation. The notion of normative democracy based on private property is alien and its spirit of disconnect frowned upon . Originally, Sainte-Marie was a popular folk and protest song singer/songwriter in the 1960′s known for sometimes cryptic lyrics and an idiosyncratic vibratto voice. Her social activism resulted in her being blacklisted in America in the late 1960′s by then President Lyndon Johnson.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Elders

Sainte-Marie is also regarded as a pioneer in computerized digital art, having first produced digital art from a MacIntosh in 1984, concurrently with her experimentation in digital music. She refers to her digital art as ”painting with light”. She has a Doctorate in Fine Art from UMass as well as holding degrees in oriental philosophy and teaching.

Sainte-Marie’s process begins with traditionally applying paint with brushes onto canvas or paper. Those images are then imported into her computer where she works with Photoshop. Additionally, she will scan in archival period photos of nineteenth and early twentieth century Ameridians.This is followed by a process of altered art where there is an interaction between photography and digital pixel painting. Once finished, she will brush paint with metallic and irridescent colors and sometimes powders to further enhance the luminescent images.The artwork is pop art, modern work with a hommage to the rich historical culture of her ancestors. The work evokes images of psychedelia due to color saturation and her finished images are not uncommon to be seven to nine feet high.

Buffy Sainte Marie: ”An artist will satisfy the creative urge by making music on pots and pans or by composing for an orchestra, by making images in the sand with a finger or by manipulating light with a computer. The real art occurs in the imagination. Then the work begins. The tools are whatever we can get, beads or pixels, hunting bows or an orchestra”. (1995)