Biography
Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Neal Ambrose-Smith is a descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. A renowned painter, sculptor, Ambrose-Smith formerly served as professor and department chair at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
Threaded throughout Ambrose-Smith’s technically skilled work is an intensely personal maximalist reflection on contemporary culture, politics, and society. Borrowing from the strategies of postmodern collage, his work juxtaposes Native motifs, passages of gestural abstraction, and mass media imagery lifted from vintage comic books, clip art, and television screens. A rotating cast of characters—from Batman and Darth Vader to the Coyote trickster—act as allegorical ciphers, sardonically evoking themes of racism, environmental destruction, and the legacy of colonialism.
Beginning in the 1990s, Ambrose-Smith collaborated with his mother, the internationally recognized Native artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, on several significant sculptures and exhibitions. He has also developed an app, Artist Ideas, designed to stimulate creative thinking.
Ambrose-Smith’s work is featured in the collections of many major museums, including the Boise Art Museum; Denver Art Museum; Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis; Flint Institute of Arts; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Library of Congress, Washington DC; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; New York Public Library; Salish Kootenai College, Pablo, Montana; School of Art Institute, Chicago; University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Nevada, Reno; Whitney Museum of American Art.
