Cheryl Yellowhawk

As a long-time resident of New Mexico, Cheryl Yellowhawk has learned to absorb and capture the sense of eternity of the southwest landscape in her work. Interestingly, her use of bright pastel colors for the mesas, arroyos, and mountain vistas has also been transferred into her more recent tropical surroundings now that she lives in Florida. Whether the subject is landscape or still life or figures, her exciting use of bright vivid color and organic imagery is the signature of emotion that effortlessly involves the viewer. Her passionate style continues to evolve as she explores new techniques.

Cheryl graduated with honors from the Institute of American Indian Arts and received a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico.  She has held numerous shows including the Corcoran Gallery.  “Eagle in Flight”, an oil painting was published in the 2002 “Dreams and Visions” calendar. It also toured with the Smithsonian Exhibit of “Birds of Raptor.”

Besides being a full time creative artist, she is very active in the local art community showing in various venues all around Largo and Tampa Bay Florida.  In addition, for the past 7 years she has been the Event Coordinator, Vice President, and now President of the Fine Arts Society a group that has fostered interests in the visual fine arts over 50 years.  She was also a docent of the former Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo, FL. 

More About The Artist

Cheryl's father, a career army master sergeant, moved the family several times throughout the U.S. and Europe, where she developed an appreciation for the diversity of art and architecture among the Europeans, which contrasted greatly with her mother’s Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in South Dakota.  Her fondest childhood memories are stories told of great-great grandfather Peace Chief Yellowhawk (Sans-Arc meaning "Without Bows") of her great-grandmother, Nancy-Who-Sees-the-Horses, a survivor of the Battle of Wounded Knee, and recipient of the Lewis and Clark peace medallion.  Her grandmother’s spirit and medicine woman connection to the mysteries of life are passed down through Cheryl’s art. Cheryl reclaimed her Sioux name after her mother’s death in 1985.