Painting a Narrative with Julie Buffalohead at Jessica Silverman

By using animal motifs and pop culture references, Buffalohead delves into the make-up of a psyche that wrestles between an archetypal knowing and that of a world full of personal, yet contemporary, references. 

Unadulterated by a hierarchy of narrative in her work, Buffalohead’s expression doesn’t end at individual symbols, but is brought together by a holistic worldbuilding that unites the figures in her work. 

In the painting Cherries (2024), a viewer is faced with two foxes positioned upside down from one another, as a bowl of cherries and a bowl of blueberries is set between them. A striking detail— beyond the fruit, which is peculiarly placed next to each animal— is how the foxes seem to be encharged with playing opposite roles in the piece. 

While one of the foxes is alert, with his mouth agape, eyes wide open, and an active body, the other, with its head facing the bottom of the canvas, has its eyes closed, legs relaxed, and the bowl of cherries capsized and succumbed to gravity. 

Though more sparse in characters than other paintings in Buffalohead’s series, this piece seems to confront an idea of death. Not only does this come across in the yin yang shape made by the pair of animals, or in how their bodies mirror opposite traits, but also in the weighty bowls of fruit. 

The two fruits may be representative of the change of seasons, from spring/summer to summer/fall, but they also seem to embody the eventual transformation of the self as well. As one version of life cyclically— or permanently— rests, a new one is born.

Another piece invested in the poetic depiction of cycles and transformation is the painting Wind Woman (2024). Here, Buffalohead ties in the manual history of textile work, which she refers to as a "a woman's signature," by including traces of ribbonwork. A pregnant woman in a vibrant green field leans up against an isolated column that mimics the style of embroidered patterns. 

Though this structure serves as a safe space where the woman can lean, it also introduces a metaphor about history, community, and honor, since the nod toward the borrowed medium can be interpreted as a reclamation of the craft. 

The woman depicted in the painting may be eating a red and bulbous fruit, but it could just as easily be her heart. Enjoying this moment, the woman is filled with peace as she faces slightly toward the sky, and a line of four hares travel along an exposed umbilical cord from her feet to her head. 

The piece asks the viewer for presence and intuitive leaps. The protagonist has something to communicate, something which may feel intangible, but lives right beneath the surface. That is the common thread through all of Buffalohead’s works. 

Due to her interest in personal myth, desires and ideas meld with ancestral symbols to convey contemplative human stories which create their own lore of self-discovery and expansion.