11x17 Print
From Mog Park
Originally a commission piece request.  Client wanted a Samurai Indian with the mark of the Red Hand symbolizing the thousands of indigenous women who have disappeared without proper investigations. With that in mind client chose Dani Moonstar from the X-Men for this commission.

There is a red hand over her mouth which the client specially requested. It is a symbol to raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Every life is worth looking intoand no life should ever be treated so hastely. I hope there can be better resolutions to this problem. Hopefully through Dani I too can raise some awareness of these tragic women.CompositionThis was for a client who just had an organ transplant and to commemorate the recovery I wanted to make it special for him.Theme is Dani Moonstar in Japanese Archery, Samurai, and her native American Heritage, with her horse. After research I realized she also is linked to Nordic Mythology. Her horse Bright Wind chose her to be a Valkyrie and for a moment Dani was one. Then there was the loss of power, Bright Wind dies becomes Dark Wind, then dies again(you get the idea). Finally, she makes a pact with Hella and regains her horse back, Valkyrie powers on top of her X men powers which are manipulations of fear and illusions. I chose this moment to depict her in all her full glory.I looked up samurai archery and took some references from Yabusame, which is mounted archery in Japan. ‘This style of archery has its origins at the beginning of the Kamakura period. Minamoto no Yoritomo became alarmed at the lack of archery skills his samurai possessed. He organized yabusame as a form of practice.’ It was excellent material for poses and horse anatomy which I don’t know much of. I wanted the horse to look at least decent enough to the viewers.  To keep within the theme, the color scheme I chose were black, yellow, red, blue and white because Dani wears black and yellow. Native American culture uses white, red and blue a lot.