Ric Gendron (Arrow Lake Colville) was born on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in northeastern Washington and grew up in Coulee Dam and Spokane. Gendron's paintings and
mixed-media works limn a rich and diverse vocabulary of traditional Upper Columbia Plateau Indian culture and iconography, made wholly contemporary. Deeply influenced by the Beat poets, and by
Kerouac, Ferlingetti, Hunter S. Thompson, and other prominent West Coast writers of the 1960s and '70s, his work also encompasses the rhythms and strategies of traditional Native music, and
American traditional music, blues, country, folk, and rock and roll. For over three decades, Ric Gendron has been quietly and intensely creating a deeply imaginative, sincere, culturally
authentic, approachable body of work--beautiful, moving paintings.
An independent writer and curator, Ben Mitchell is the author of Ruben Trejo: Beyond Boundaries and editor of John Buck: Iconography, among other works. He divides his
time between the northern Idaho Rockies and southwest Michigan.
