Before a canvas by Oklahoma-born Yatika Starr Fields, the vortex of tornado-like motion sucks the air from the room. Dynamic, frenzied slashing brushwork combines with the overwhelming momentum of color-infused drama to hide abstracted subjects in a collision of gestural paint on the canvas surface. As dramatic as his work may appear, Fields presents visual references that serve to present his truth, shifting and challenging perceptions from the observer. The art of Fields is overwhelming on first viewing and then enticing as it draws in the observer who seeks to know more.

      Fields represents the generation of children whose successful professional parents' careers in art influenced him to excel in the pursuit of artmaking through international travel and formal education at prestigious national art institutions. While a student, his exposure as a bike messenger to New York’s frenetic streets and to the city’s graffiti mural culture animated Fields’s sense of color as well as the dynamic compositions that are an unmistakable trademark of his style.

      During his formal education, Fields received several awards and opportunities to further his training in a manner reflective of the eighteenth century “grand tour,” which allowed him to travel and study in Sienna, Florence, and Rome, Italy. Significantly, he was selected by the State Department to represent Native artists in Brunei, where he worked on projects with international exposure to other communities and cultures. These experiences have, in time, impacted his own work. Additionally, his collaboration with younger artists to produce commissioned murals for public buildings and spaces have resulted in an observable imprint on Oklahoma’s culture. Fields, who now lives and works in Tulsa, is changing the visual landscape of the region.

      Fields revealed that, as he completed work on Rapture $ Woe, Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral blazed in a catastrophic fire, marking a world event that induced joy as well as trauma in Indigenous communities. He observed: “we look to the painting as a gestural form of retrograde in thought and solution to what was witnessed. Powerful and provoking, a cat-like animal swipes to extinguish or ignite the blaze, your stance as the viewer contends as an apparition to contest.”¹

      The vocabulary of contemporary art centers on selfhood, identity, place, personal ambition, and tradition in flux. All of these concerns, Fields strives to communicate with his audience. As his mature style and sense of self have been embraced by the wider art community, Fields has added his name to the roster of impressive Native artists whose work will continue to impact future generations of younger practitioners. His paintings demonstrate that the traditions and evolutions of two-dimensional expression move in ways that are not always linear or circular and are aggressive, dynamic, and awash in color. Whether the surface is canvas or wall, they mark a transition: the future has arrived.

¹ Yatika Starr Fields, “Artist Statement” in Realms and Apparitions, (Tulsa, OK.: Joseph Gierek Fine Art, 2019).