Peter Sohappy, Santa Fean

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I am Peter Sohappy Thrall, born in Port Oregon, 1953. I am currently not enrolled with any tribe or Treaty Confederacy in North America. I bear no certificate of Indian blood. I am not related to any families with the first or surnames dubbed SoHappy, neither at Warm Springs Confederacy in Oregon or Umatilla Reservation, also in Oregon. Neither am I related to folks enrolled at the Yakima Confederacy in Washington State.

I identify myself as a "Regular Rainbow Dude" because of my religious cultural beliefs and customary practices. In the marketplace, my reference is because I would want curators and collectors to know the origin of these works.

I am a working artist in Santa Fe, N.M. My works are considered generally as "Neo-Primitive Imagery". My works are not necessarily fetishes and are not meant to celebrate any cultural customs of the Zuni People or any other aboriginal work cultural view in North America or the US at large.

My entire motive for my works is to celebrate, endorse, and commemorate in effigy my daily experience. Hopefully other folks or participants (i.e. collectors) get this sense from my executions. If this can be so for the collector, then as an artist I have met my mark. I certainly hope that one's acquisition of these works would be for the reasoning mentioned.

Hopefully the tangibility of the works, as well as the imagery, can inspire sensitivity which endorses an emotional landmark for sake of well-being. Well, that's what I hope to imply, other than the excited motives of an artist in the field. These humble offerings are composed of no more and no less.

Peace be with you.
Thanks,
Peter Sohappy, Santa Fean