'Color and form are the building blocks of my art practice and connect me to my Piikani heritage. As a Piikani visual artist, my influences are Blackfoot-painted lodges, hides, and war shirts, as well as Blackfoot archaeology throughout Montana and Alberta, Canada...Other sources of inspiration include ancient sites, petroglyphs, pictographs, pictorial imagery, rocks, rock formations, and glacial erratics.
Terran Last Gun, Saakwaynaamah’kaa (Last Gun), (b. 1989, Browning, MT) is an enrolled citizen of the Piikani Nation (Blackfeet) of Montana and a visual artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Piikani are one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy, collectively called the Niitsitapi (Real People). Born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, Last Gun works across media to explore color, form, and abstraction. Drawing inspiration from land, cosmos, cultural narratives, and experiences, Last Gun pushes the boundaries of Piikani modernism.
Terran Last Gun received his BFA and AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe (2016). He is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2024 Biennial Award, and was an artist-in-residence at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CA (2023). His ledger drawings were included in Once Within a Time, curated by Cecilia Alemani, 12th Site Santa Fe International, NM (2025-2026); Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always, curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, NJ (2025) and Modern Recordings of Ancient Blackfoot Symbolism, a two-artist exhibition, Anderson Ranch Arts Center (2024). He has received solo exhibitions with Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles; Hecho a Mano, Santa Fe, NM; Chapter, NYC; McLain Gallery, Houston; and at Hockaday Museum of Art, Kalispell, MT (2024); Missoula Art Museum, MT (2023); Contemporary at Blue Star, San Antonio, TX (2021); and IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), Santa Fe, NM (2020).
Drawings are in the permanent collection of The Nasher Museum of Art, NC; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Chrysler Museum of Art; Harvard Art Museums; Museum of the Plains Indian, MT; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM; and the Bates Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME, among others. Terran Last Gun lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.