The Native American Artist Harnessing ‘Old Indian Tricks’
A Native American artist, who spent years learning the craft by watching her parents, tells how she discovered a secret to an old technique used by those who were once masters of the trade and who were called ‘Old Indian Tricks’.
A.J. Doolittle knows what it feels like to be an artist, someone who sees the world through the eyes of an artist. She’s been honing her artistic skills and learning the tricks of the trade – painting murals, carving wood sculptures and even writing poetry – for most of her life.
Doolittle has always had artistic talent, but she wanted to work with wood instead of canvas or oil paint. For years, she tried painting with canvas, making mistakes that weren’t visible to anyone. She spent many years failing as an artist because she was too scared of making mistakes.
“I still have these problems that I’d call “accidents” and I think that’s probably true,” Doolittle said in a recent interview with Native American News Service. “I just kept making mistakes. The biggest ones I keep thinking, ‘I’m going to die here, I’m not going to make it.’ But I kept believing that I could make it.”
Eventually, Doolittle decided to stop trying. She was in her mid-twenties and she wanted to move on. She wanted to be a different kind of artist, one that was bold and fearless. She wanted to work by herself and to explore new ways to express herself. She wanted to find something that was all in her, and there was no one else in the world who knew about her craft except for three of her siblings.
“So I said to myself,” Doolittle said. “I’m never going to do this, I’m never going to make it to art school. When I was younger, I liked being an artist. It’s such a self-expression, but I�