David E Williams

Biography

David Emmett Williams (native name: Tos-que) was born 20 August 1933, in Lawton, Oklahoma to singer and leather-worker Emmett Williams (Tonkawa/Kiowa-Apache and his Kiowa wife, Jennie Sahkoodlequoie, who was descended of Sitting Bear. Census records confirm Williams was a full-blood, but show his father's heritage was Comanche.

Williams studied at the Indian Art Center in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, under Olle Nordmark and later at Bacone College with contemporary Native American painters, Joan Hill, Doc Tate Nevaquaya, and Bert Seabourn under Dick West, but did not become a serious painter until 1959. Prior to that, he performed as a traditlonal dancer and singer and worked in a shoe factory. He became serious and passionate about art in the early 1960s and worked in acrylic, gouache, pencil, prints and tempera. All of the artists of this period at Bacone were taught the flat-style painting technique, which was required for the Philbrook Museum of Art annual competitions. Philbrook and Bacone had an agreement in the 1940s–1960s period whereby student's work would be hung and offered for sale, with the school garnering one third of the profits of any sale. Williams participated in the annual competitions and was one of the Grand Award winners in the early 1960s. He also won, during the same time frame, the national competition held at the Bismarck National Indian Art Show in Bismarck, North Dakota.

In 1961, Williams married Norma Jean Eubanks and the couple moved to Los Angeles. Actor Vincent Price, who at the time was working as a Native American art expert, purchased 50 of William's paintings to sell through Sears Roebuck's Fine Arts Collection nationwide. William's first solo exhibit was at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, in 1964. That same year, he also did a two man show with sand painter, David Villasenor, at the Pasadena Public Library. He had other solo shows at the Southern Plains Indian Museum and Craft Center in Anadarko, Oklahoma, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Los Angeles and the Tryon Gallery in London.

By 1970, the Williams family had decided to move back to Oklahoma and were living in Tahlequah with their two sons. In 1972, Williams participated in the Contemporary Southern Plains Indian Painting Exhibition tour sponsored by the Southern Plains Indian Museum and the Oklahoma Indian Arts and Crafts Co-operative of Anadarko. In 1974, he won the Grand Prize at the Trail of Tears Art show at the Cherokee Heritage Center.

During his lifetime, Williams had multiple and profitable exhibits throughout the United States including at the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson;the First Annual National American Indian Art Exposition in Charlotte, North Carolina; the Laguna Gloria Art Museum of Austin, Texas; the McCombs Gallery at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma; the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art in Owensboro, Kentucky, among many others. He also won awards at the American Indian Exposition of Anadarko and the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonials in Gallup, New Mexico. Besides in private collections, Williams’ work is part of the permanent collections in museums including the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma; Gilcrease Museum and the Philbrook Art Museum, both in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona; the Southern Plains Museum in Anadarko; and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, as well as the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.

In 1980, Williams designed the centennial logo for Bacone college. He virtually stopped painting in 1981, having lost his eyesight to diabetes. In 1983, he was inducted into the Bacone College Alumni Hall of Fame.

Williams died in November, 1985 of complications of diabetes.

Selected works