Terran Last Gun / Sah’kwiinaamah’kaa, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe, is a visual artist and printmaker who was born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation, where the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains.  As a Piikani (Blackfeet) citizen within the Blackfoot Confederacy, he sees his art as a continuum of the ancient Native American narrative tradition.  His artwork is a visual interpretation of nature, the cosmos, cultural narratives, and recollections of home in reduced geometric aesthetics and color harmonies. 

He received an A.S. degree in Environmental Science from the Blackfeet Community College, Browning, Montana and his B.F.A. in Museum Studies and A.F.A. in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He is a recipient of numerous awards including:  the 2020 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship; 2018 Santa Fe Art Institute Story Maps Fellowship; and the 2016 Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship.  He currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Artist Statement

Often referencing Blackfoot painted lodges and the visual iconographic vocabulary that accompanies them, my work explores the varying relationships between color, shape, nature, and sky.  Blackfoot painted lodges are visual masterpieces of the Great Plains.  They depict the world and cosmos in which we live through our natural surroundings, symbolic animals and helpers, and the above world that connects us to the Sun, Moon, and Morning Star.

My work bridges the ancient to the contemporary.  It reaches beyond, all while creating visual color stimulation in my varied approaches to making art: printmaking, painting, photography, and ledger drawing.  I am revealing fragments of time, history, and Indigenous Abstraction—an art form that has continued for tens of thousands of years.  I am creating a new Piikani art form that is bold, vivid, even humorous at times and has minimalist and geometric qualities that are potent in meaning, content, and place.

Throughout Piikani territory in northwest Montana you find rolling hills all along the Rocky Mountain front.  At times they even look like islands out on the vast open plains.  Always above us, rising and setting each day, is Naatoosii (Sun) who is depicted in the sky.  Within the hill you can see a puff ball that can be found near the mountains.  On top of the full bleed green background is the red rolling hill.  Using complimentary color schemes creates a sense of visual vibration that can be seen in Rolling Hill 2.

– Terran Last Gun

Land of the Sky Beings is what I imagine the sky world or the cosmos would possibly look like or the mood this place would radiate – where the Sun, Moon and Morning Star live.  With serigraphy I am able to print on alternative sources of paper such as this paper bag that adds a pop art sensibility to the work.  The gradation pull using two acrylic paint colors in one go, adds a whole new dimension to my work.  I often work with layering both warm and cool colors for its vibrancy and intensity, the colors pop more.

– Terran Last Gun