THE INDIAN ART OF
ROBERT GRIFFING
A journey into America’s 18th-century eastern frontier Possessing an innate talent for drawing, Griffing enrolled in art school after high school, and became art director at an advertising agency in Pittsburgh for the next 30 years, but he pursued his painting hobby during odd hours. “I just couldn’t get Indians out of my head,” he says. In 1991, Griffing’s alma mater, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, offered him a one-man show featuring his art. It was an evening that changed his life. “Within an hour, all of my paintings of Eastern Woodlands Indians had sold, and many people ordered prints of those seven original portraits,” he says. Soon after, Griffing resigned from his ad-agency job and turned to painting full-time. “It was the best career move
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here others see modern-day cities, he sees ancient Indian villages. Where others see today’s crop fields, he sees vast virgin forests. In short, Robert Griffing sees Ohio as it was long before it ever became a state. He also sees — and paints — the Native American people who lived here more than 250 years ago. Born and raised in the extreme northwest corner of Pennsylvania (Linesville, to be exact), Griffing has been intrigued by North American Indians ever since that memorable day as a boy when he found his first flint arrowhead lying along the shoreline of nearby Pymatuning Lake. “That was the beginning of my fascination with Indians,” Robert says. The Newcomers
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OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • JULY 2018