| Biography/History: |
James Lavadour was born and currently lives in the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon, where he founded the Crow's Shadow Foundation in 1991. Crow's Shadow is a non-profit arts organization set up in an old Catholic mission school house with the cooperation of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The project serves to bring arts programs, classes, teachers, and artists to the reservation, and at the same time promote grassroots entrepreneurial economic development. Lavadour is an internationally recognized painter who has been featured in traveling exhibitions of the Print Club in Philadelphia and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and has exhibited since 1983. He received the Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Award in 1991. One critic wrote that "by fusing his very physical style with an artistic vision based on a lifetime in the Oregon high desert, Lavadour conjures onto canvas the vital spirit of the Landscape itself.” |