
Leatrice Angel Mikkelsen, Coral Garden
Leatrice Angel Mikkelsen
1937-2016
Diné (Navajo)/Cherokee/Wyandot
Date
1974
Medium Specific
Felt tip pens on bond paper
Classification
Drawing
Dimensions
11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Accession Number
1983.20.22.01
Credit
Gift of the Artist
Biography
Certain themes and imagery flow through the artwork of Mikkelsen, who is Navajo, Cherokee and Wyandott. Central to her work are the Navaho stories about the emergence of the Dine as they moved from each succeeding world into the present world and the birth of White Shell Woman. Mikkelsen's attraction to the spiral line and the symbols of the four directions in her artwork are related to the shell, water and sun elements in White Shell Woman's story.
Mikkelsen's images are influenced by many sources, from pictographs to tribal histories. She chooses the shell because it has a deeper meaning to her: "In itself, it is incomprehensible -- an animate and inanimate object, hollowed dead shell, smooth, sensuous, death reality, magnificence, a debris linked with many living moments. It is powerful in many meanings. ... The shell was a link to myself; I held it. From this contact, I began to paint."
Born in Oregon and raised in Arizona and California, Mikkelsen has a background in art and music. She attended Dominican University in San Rafael on a music scholarship, since she is an accomplished violinist in addition to being an artist. She received her bachelor's degree from Dominican in 1959 and proceeded on to San Francisco State University, where she received her master's degree in art and anthropology in 1963. She immediately began producing art for local galleries and by the 1980s was exhibiting nationwide.
Mikkelsen passed on April 9, 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA.
Mikkelsen's images are influenced by many sources, from pictographs to tribal histories. She chooses the shell because it has a deeper meaning to her: "In itself, it is incomprehensible -- an animate and inanimate object, hollowed dead shell, smooth, sensuous, death reality, magnificence, a debris linked with many living moments. It is powerful in many meanings. ... The shell was a link to myself; I held it. From this contact, I began to paint."
Born in Oregon and raised in Arizona and California, Mikkelsen has a background in art and music. She attended Dominican University in San Rafael on a music scholarship, since she is an accomplished violinist in addition to being an artist. She received her bachelor's degree from Dominican in 1959 and proceeded on to San Francisco State University, where she received her master's degree in art and anthropology in 1963. She immediately began producing art for local galleries and by the 1980s was exhibiting nationwide.
Mikkelsen passed on April 9, 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA.