Kachina Spirit Painting by Carolyn Oberst - as part of the series on arts by GeoBeats.

I am Carolyn Oberst and this painting is called "Kachina Spirit." This is based on two Kachina dolls that I found when I was in the Southwest and I thought they were really compelling as subject matter for painting because of their sense of power. Kachina's have a long history of being representative of power and also, I included some patterns and snakes and different other elements of the Southwest culture, the hands that I saw when I was out there so, I wanted to really express about how I felt seeing all this new culture in the Southwest and to make a painting about that kind of spirit.

I used wood, oil on wood, cut from different thicknesses of wood. And then, painted separate elements. Painting the backboard and screwed it onto the backboard from behind. The pallet here also captures, I feel, the Southwest pallet. It is much more subdued than my usual work but, I feel it really connects with the subject matter.