About

The art of Gordon Little is a reflection of the rich and diverse culture of the West. A native Arizonan, Gordon has wandered the harsh cactus-laden deserts and mountains of the Southwest and hiked and fished the mountain streams of the Northwest. Growing up in the Sonoran Desert north of Phoenix, and living a short time in Tuba City and Flagstaff in and near the Navajo Nation, Gordon studied the land, its wildlife, vegetation and peoples. He learned to love the solitude of the open spaces, the quiet beauty of the Navajos tending sheep and the hogans dotting the harsh and unbending desert.

“I can remember my father took me to a great canyon where a spirit of a ghost dancer would appear on the canyon wall. The place seemed as though it was paradise to me. There it was on the opposing cliff face, a woman dancing on her own. The moon would come through the rocks and create the shape of a woman on the wall. This left quite an impression on a five-year-old boy.”Gordon Little

The impressions gathered from his youth, his own family’s western heritage and many days spent in the wilds are the soul of his art. His family heritage is that of western pioneers. On the maternal side his great-grandfather rode the Goodnight-Loving Trail, and the family homesteaded ranches and trapped, hunted and farmed around Tres Lagunas, New Mexico. His father’s side of the family dates back to homesteaders in Arkansas and the Oklahoma Indian Territories.

An avid backpacker, bow hunter, fisherman and skilled outdoorsman, Gordon knows the struggles of life in the wilderness. His work captures the solitude, the grace and the strength of both people and wildlife: a largemouth bass breaking the water, an angler’s lure hooked in its mouth; an ornate silver fly in the mouth of a rainbow trout as it flips out of a stream. Both moments were first carved in wax and clay, then cast in bronze with close attention to detail and anatomy.

His bronzes and watercolors depict Native Americans for their closeness to the land and their culture: a usually stoic Navajo woman grinning with joy as she holds her grandchild high, a woman with a bundle of wood struggling home through the snow. A mountain man shielding himself under a log from a winter storm, the pueblo built solid to endure through the centuries. The subjects all show inner strength and solitude.

Few artists work in as many mediums. Gordon studied under Winthrop Williams at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, a university known for its large bronze foundries. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture and had work placed in a Scottsdale gallery before graduation. Since then his work has been shown in galleries in Sedona, Flagstaff and Scottsdale, Arizona; Dallas, Texas; and Poulsbo, Washington.

Gordon now lives on the Suquamish Nation tribal lands in western Washington. Though different from the desert Southwest, the region offers the same wilderness only a few hundred yards from home. His work is a plain and honest reading of his world, from the arid deserts of the Navajo Nation to the Olympic Mountains and the land of the Suquamish.

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