Selected paintings and drawings
All images copyright John Feodorov. Use of images, except for educational purposes, by permission only.
The Assimilations series originally centered around an early 20th century Pentecostal hymn book that my mother passed down to me. Many Navajos on the reservation converted to Pentecostalism in the early 20th C. and abandoned the traditional spiritual ways (at least superficially). Though my mother did not follow this path, she did end up converting to Jehovah’s Witnesses a year after I was born. However, as she grew older, I recognized bits of residual Navajo spiritual traditions peeking out from behind her JW persona. As a teenager, I secretly wondered what it meant to take on the religion of “the enemy”. My unease only grew as I got older, and led to me finally splitting with Christianity in my mid 20’s. Yet, just as I believe that my mother was not able to fully purge Navajo spiritual traditions from her identity, I know that residual colonization will always reside somewhere within me despite any efforts to purge it. Perhaps colonization is like herpes in that way? All one can do is to keep it under control.
Yellow Dirt series (2021-22): Acrylic, latex, ink sand, collage and graphite on wood panels. 12 panels 60 x 48 inches each (152.4 x 121.92 cm).
A series of 12 acrylic and mixed-media paintings created for a solo exhibition at Ohio University’s Kennedy Museum of Art in September 2022. The series responds to the ongoing health and environmental crises on and near the Navajo reservation from over 500 abandoned uranium mines.
Effects include “lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, as well as bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water.” (EPA.gov). Birth defects are also attributed to contaminated water.
Despite this disturbing history, Hydro Resources Inc. is still pushing for further uranium mining in the areas of Crownpoint and Church Rock in New Mexico. Further info can be found at: New Mexico Environmental Law Center.
Land-Memory Improvisations (2020):
Series of three improvisations using printed Google satellite maps of the Whitehorse Chapter area of New Mexico, just east of Chaco Canyon that was allotted to my grandparents and mother in the 1920’s. These three paintings are a precursor to what later became the Yellow Dirt series above.
Gas Pump Triptych (2019):
After my mother passed away, I brought her ashes to my grandparents’ homestead in New Mexico according to her wishes. I met my cousin Franny at one of the meeting houses in the town of Crownpoint and came across these old and abandoned gas pumps. I took some photos, not sure what I would do with them. Years later it struck me that these gas pumps function as a kind of memento mori, shells no longer containing energy, carcasses of a dying technology perhaps now inhabited and repurposed by passing animals and spirits. 47 1/4” x 30” each framed.
Gospel of the Redman (2019):
Four 10 x 10 inch mixed-media works on wood panels.
Other paintings and drawings:
