One of the real joys of being in this business is meeting new artists, or at least artists you aren’t familiar with. That happened one day this last fall when Bilson Kee came into the gallery and worked with Linda Perala, one of our top associates.
He brought some lovely acrylic paintings on canvas, and Linda immediately realized he was something beyond a casual artist. She bought them and our customers liked them.
The first time I met him, he said he had some sand paintings to show us. It’s not often that a person with talent in painting also does sand painting, so I wondered what they looked like.
It turns out they were not traditional sand art at all. He coated a fiberboard with sand and then painted the scene with acrylic. The late Bobby Johnson perfected this technique thirty years ago, but I’d never seen anyone else do it well.
In addition, Bilson cut Yeibichai figures out of a second board and glued them on top of the first board. When he painted them, they created a 3-D image. His painting is precise, and his images are beautiful.
Kee was born in Ganado, Arizona, in 1963 and raised west of there in the small community of Cottonwood. During his early school years and through high school in Chinle, Arizona, he collected first-place ribbons at school art shows.
“I did drawing, sand painting, watercolor, and acrylic painting,” he says. “I did three-dimensional art, like carving and sculpture. I even made art out of tree stumps! It was just something I could do.”
The family moved to Scottsdale, where they lived between 1991 and 1995. He found a way to support himself there through his art.
“There was a place called Rawhide on North Scottsdale Road, kind of an old west town, and I demonstrated sand painting. They had lots of tourists, and I was able to make a living there.“
When they closed, I moved to Farmington and started doing different paintings with sand. I would coat a board with sand and then paint on it with acrylics.”
Working with Vince and Helen Ferrari of Arroyo Trading in Farmington, Kee entered his work at the Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial and won blue ribbons in three categories.
The artist continues experimenting. He is currently coating the leather on hand drums with sand, using them as the backdrop for his paintings. He continues to paint with acrylic on canvas.
He is an artist who constantly pushes himself to try something new while maintaining his tradition. We are grateful to work with him on that journey.
