'Color and form are the building blocks of my art practice and connect me to my Piikani heritage.'
Last Gun’s work focuses on color and shape exploration, and the visual documentation of nature, cosmos, narratives, and recollections. Often employing geometric aesthetics, he contributes to an ancient yet continuum Indigenous North American narrative through various media, including ledger drawing, printmaking, painting, and photography. Last Gun’s drawings on ledger book paper merge Piikani art form and imagery within the context of 20th century art movements. He employs a visual language that infuses form and color with indigenous symbolism to create new portals for accessing these histories.
The artist explains his artwork and the influence of Blackfoot culture as “a visual interpretation of nature, the cosmos, cultural narratives, and recollections in reduced geometric aesthetics and vibrant energetic color harmonies. (...) Piikani or Blackfoot painted lodges are visual masterpieces of the Great Plains and are pre-European invasion classic art. [They] depict the world in which we live, through geometric geological landmarks, figurative animals, and the above world that connects us to Natosi (Sun).”
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.
He has exhibited at venues including the Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO); Hockaday Museum of Art (Kalispell, MT); Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT); Bates Museum of Art (Lewiston, ME); Newberry Library (Chicago, IL); The 8th Floor (New York, NY); Museum of the Plains Indian (Browning, MT); Contemporary at Blue Star (San Antonio, TX); and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), among others.
Last Gun received his BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. He has received awards from the First Peoples Fund 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute 2018 Story Maps Fellowship, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 2016 Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship. Last Gun was named one of the 2022 12 New Mexico Artists