Title: Woodland Bee

Artist: Amber L. DuBoise-Shepherd

Tribal Affiliation: Enrolled with the Navajo Nation, Tribally Affiliated with Sac & Fox and Prairie Band Potawatomi

Year Completed: 2022

Medium: Oil Paints on Panel Board

Dimensions (HxWxD): 8" x 8" x 1"

Description/Inspiration:

Created in 2022 this bee was created from a reference photo I took of it in my flower garden. My flower garden is special to me as it was my way of coping with COVID-19 and it provided me a way to grow and nourish living beings from the flowers, bees, hummingbirds, and other small creatures. The flower garden is right outside our bedroom window, and I always take a peek each morning to check on the garden. I love seeing pollinators out in my garden just like this bee. The designs I use are based on traditional woodland designs of the great lake tribes. This painting is a small reminder that we are all connected to each other from plants, insects, animals, and human beings.

Artist Bio/Statement:

Amber L. DuBoise-Shepherd depicts contemporary Native American narratives based on her family heritage of Navajo, Sac & Fox, and Prairie Band Potawatomi. Her Navajo clans are Red House & Near Water People Clan, and her Sac & Fox clan is Wolf. Her mixed media pieces and oil paintings reference an illustrative quality. She has an Associates of Art from Seminole State College and completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Spring 2016 at Oklahoma State University. She was accepted into Momentum March 2017, March 2019, and March 2020 in Oklahoma that was sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. She won Best of Show in 2016, 1 st Place in 2017, and 1 st , 2 nd , and Judges Choice Award in 2018, and Best of Show in 2019 in her categories for the Cushing, OK Native American Heritage Festival Juried Art Show and Native Fest Juried Art Show. At the end of 2020 she won Grand Prize and Runner up for IMAGEN Art Competition: "Native Traditions is Medicine: Resilience and Native Lifeways during COVID-19". DuBoise-Shepherd was also one of two selected for the first ever Red Earth's Emerging Artist Award in 2018 by the Red Earth board for her body of work. She has exhibited Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, OK consisted of her most recent body of work in her exhibition Tradition Through Modern Eyes 2018. She had a solo exhibition at the Jacobson Native Art Center from April-May 2019. In 2020 she exhibited at the TAC Gallery in Tulsa, OK for her exhibition Living on the Native Oklahoma Reservation, as well as being accepted into the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Exhibition Concept/Survey at the Ahha Gallery in Tulsa, OK. DuBoise- Shepherd exhibited work at the Ahha Gallery in July 2020 for the Re/Convening exhibition in Tulsa, OK, Azhwakwa: Contemporary Anishinaabe Art exhibition at the Jacobson Native Art Center in Norman, OK in August 2020, and Speak: Speak While You Can exhibition at Living Arts in Tulsa, OK.

She has increasingly been showing at different markets to sell and show her work to the public and was accepted in the Santa Fe Indian Market August of 2018 and 2019, which is the biggest Native American arts market in the world, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She attended the Artesian Native Art Market in Sulphur, OK, and The Cherokee Art Market in Catoossa, OK for the first time in 2019. She is married and currently lives in her hometown of Shawnee, OK with her husband Josh Shepherd.

Please note:

Shipping within the U.S. & Canada is included in the purchase price. Sales tax and an additional 4% + $2.00 per item will be applied to the entire transaction to cover taxes, credit card processing, and other fees.