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Creating vivid paintings of horses, the Wild West and prairie life, Gerald David Tailfeathers was a promising artist from the time he was a boy living on Blood Reserve in Alberta. Training at prestigious art schools in Canada and the United States, Tailfeathers became one of the first professional Indigenous artists in Canada.

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Stand Off, Alta., was the birthplace of Tailfeathers on Feb. 14, 1925. His parents, Sakoyena and Estomachi, were members of the Blood tribe of the Kainai Nation in the southern region of the province. “The Blood or Kainaiwa, are one of the three nations that comprise the Blackfoot Confederacy,” according to Hugh Dempsey and Michelle Filice in The Canadian Encyclopedia, Aug. 25, 2023. Siksika and Piikani Nations are the others.

The boy grew up in a close-knit community that held traditional Plains-culture beliefs in the afterlife and the spirit world. “They used medicine bundles, performed sacred ceremonies such as the Sun Dance, and sought Shamans for spiritual guidance and healing,” said Dempsey and Felice. Tailfeathers attended the Anglican Church’s St. Paul’s Residential School for a time; although unhappy there, he was able to enjoy creating art.

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Diving into art education, Tailfeathers followed the path of his uncle, Percy Plainswoman. A self-taught artist, Plainswoman signed his work with his Blackfoot name, Two Gun. He was “the first Kainai to make his living as an artist,” noted Lethbridge Historical Society.

An innately talented youngster, Gerald Tailfeathers sold his first painting, “a portrait of Big Bull, for five dollars in 1937 at the age of 12,” stated Dr. Cora J. Voyageur in My Heroes Have Always Been Indians: A Century of Great Indigenous Albertans (Brush Education Inc. 2018). The next year, he participated in his first art exhibit “at the Fort McLeod branch of the Canadian Handicraft Guild.”

Enrolled at St. Mary Lake Summer Art School, the teenager trained with professional portrait artists Winold Reiss and Carl Linck at Glacier National Park in Montana. Furthering his education with the best instructors, Tailfeathers received a scholarship to study at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in 1941, training “under the tutelage of Charles Comfort, Walter Phillips and H.G. Glyde,” mentioned Lethbridge Historical Society.

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The blossoming artist next studied commercial and graphic art at Calgary’s Provincial School of Technology and Art. The young man wasn’t quite finished yet. He made his way to Arizona for instruction in cast-bronze sculpture with artist George Phippin.

Along the way, Tailfeathers “was influenced by the cowboy school of painting led by Charles Russell and the Oklahoma School of Indian painting, reported John Warner and Joseph Dipple in The Canadian Encyclopedia, April 12, 2024. Tailfeathers used his immense skill to record the lives of the people of the Kainai Nation on paper and canvas.

Completing his training by 1944, Tailfeathers launched “a career of city life as a commercial artist and draughtsman, taking up tempera as a medium,” wrote Nancy-Lou Patterson in Canadian Native Art: Arts and Crafts of Canadian Indians and Eskimos (Collier-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., 1976). By the mid-1950s, he emerged from an artistic slump to work with the “Glenbow Foundation, where he began to work in pen and ink, a medium in which he has perfect control.”

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Tailfeathers painted prolifically, creating images of Kainai life in the 1800s. He was determined to produce art with historically accuracy, and “in 1958 he began to use a style based upon that of Indian artists in the American Southwest, a conventionalized ‘Indian art’ style which he uses with facility,” Patterson described. Over a significant portion of his career, Tailfeathers followed advice given to him early on, to Anglicize his name. Most of his artworks were signed as Gerald T. Fethers. By the 1960s, he changed his signature to his true name.

Enjoying the benefits as a respected and popular artist, Tailfeathers attempted to build a home in Calgary, only to find that it could cause loss of his Indigenous status. Instead, after 18 years in the city, the artist returned to the reserve.

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The work of Tailfeathers gained a large following during the 1950s and 1960s, earning him respect as one of Canada’s first professional Indigenous artists. Frequently painting with watercolours and ink on paper, Tailfeathers also produced works in graphite, charcoal and coloured pencil. Occasionally, he painted with oil on canvas and canvas board, and gouache on paper. Achieving a Canadian first, a painting by Tailfeathers was published as the cover art for Western Horseman magazine’s December 1958 issue.

Receiving commissions, the artist was contracted to produce “paintings for the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and for Canada Post,” said Native Art in Canada. Tailfeathers’ collection of paintings is considered a valuable record of Indigenous history in the 19th century. Exhibiting his fine art at several shows in North America, in the mid-1960s, Tailfeathers applied his brushes to paper to create illustrations for two children’s books by Cliff Faulkner.

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Briefly entered politics, Tailfeathers was elected to a term on Council for Kainai First Nation, and was “one of seven First Nations Canadian artists that advised the federal government on production and marketing of Indigenous craftwork,” said Voyageur, “and provided recommendations on art programming, grants and services.”

Tailfeathers reached a national audience when Canada Post issued the series “Indians of Canada, Indians of the Plains” including two of his paintings. One of the eight-cent postage collection was the colourful, expressive “Fancy Dancer,” issued Oct. 4, 1972.

In 1974, Tailfeathers received an honorary doctorate of laws degree (LLD) from University of Lethbridge. Just a year later, 50-year-old Gerald Tailfeathers died at Kainai Reserve. The industrious artist was married to Irene Goodstriker, and they were parents to four daughters.

Visit the Glenbow Museum at Glenbow.org to view a portion of the gallery’s 60 paintings created by the illustrious Indigenous artist Gerald Tailfeathers.

Susanna McLeod is a writer living in Kingston.

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