Ron Mitchell, Cherokee, "Hunters Dream" — Signed with Bow & Quiver Display

The herd stretches from horizon to horizon — calves tucked close to cows, bulls grazing or resting low in the grass, the whole slow weight of the Great Plains moving under a sky so thick with stars it seems to press down on the land. At the center, a mounted hunter holds his position, hair loose in the wind, a shaft already in hand. Beneath his horse's feet, red embers glow — fire, or the last heat of a kill. The prairie breathes. Nothing about this moment is rushed.

Ron Mitchell built this panoramic composition entirely in silhouette, a deliberate formal choice rooted in the traditional Indian flat style. The figures — two dozen buffalo in varying postures, a single rider perfectly placed at the visual center — read as pure black shapes against a sky that runs from dusk gold at the horizon through indigo violet into deep space blue. Mitchell achieved that luminous graduated wash through a combination of drybrush and airbrush technique, a method he developed to translate Plains memory into something simultaneously ancient in subject and entirely his own in execution. The numbered edition was printed from an original painting; the Certificate of Authenticity confirms the run was limited to 250 signed and numbered reproductions plus 10 artist proofs. This impression is 95/250, numbered in gold at lower left, signed Ron Mitchell in gold at lower right beside his painted shield-and-arrow colophon. The framing presentation integrates a secondary lower aperture displaying a small bow and quiver in leather and yarn — a material counterpoint to the image that bridges the printed and the tactile.

About the Artist

Ron Mitchell (b. December 25, 1943) is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Cherokee Registry Number C0046496, with degree of blood certified under guidelines of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. What distinguishes Mitchell within the tradition of Plains-influenced Native American art is both biographical and technical: Mitchell is red-green colorblind, yet the Certificate of Authenticity accompanying this work pointedly notes that he uses the full spectrum of color to express feeling — a deliberate artistic adaptation that gives his graduated sky washes their particular emotional temperature. His work draws its subject matter from the pre-reservation Plains and its formal vocabulary from traditional Indian flat style, while his execution is driven by the airbrush and drybrush techniques he honed through decades of practice. The result sits at a productive tension between documentary silhouette and felt memory — less illustration than elegy.

Subject & Context

The title "Hunters Dream" nods to a specific historical reality: before the commercial slaughter of the 1870s and 1880s, the Great Plains bison herds were, by all accounts, functionally inexhaustible. As the Certificate of Authenticity's own text notes, "carnivores, fire, flood and storm took their annual toll, but neither these nor Indian hunting appeared to reduce the number of buffalo appreciably on the Great Plains. The huge herds seemed indestructible before the coming of the white man." Mitchell's composition places the viewer in that world — not the aftermath of the slaughter, but the moment before, when the herds still filled the horizon and a mounted hunter could move among them under a full sky. The panoramic format amplifies this: at nearly three feet wide, the image refuses to be contained, the buffalo moving in and out of the frame as though the land extends beyond what the eye can hold.

Authenticity

Signed in gold at lower right and numbered 95/250 in gold at lower left. The Certificate of Authenticity — affixed to the verso — confirms this work as a signed and numbered limited-edition reproduction of the original painting "Hunters Dream" by Ron Mitchell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (Cherokee Registry Number C0046496). The edition is limited to 250 signed and numbered impressions plus 10 artist proofs.

CONDITION

Good overall. Colors remain bright and saturated; signature and edition number are clear and intact. The bow-and-quiver display in the lower aperture is present. Not examined out of the frame.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall (framed): 12 1/4" H × 36 1/4" W × 1" D
• Visible (sight): 4 1/2" H × 28 1/2" W
• Edition: 95 of 250 (plus 10 artist proofs)
• Frame: Wood, double-matted, behind glass
• Bow & Quiver Display Materials: Leather, yarn
• Includes: Certificate of Authenticity, affixed verso