Art Coelho's family farm roots and hands-on heritage began in
the San Joaquin Valley. This Fresno County rural experience not
only gave him a deep understanding of nature, but from the Dustbowl
Okie migrants and hobos who worked for his father(a Wheatville
pioneer farmer in Central California)he learned the hard lessons
of survival firsthand.
His
Portuguese grandparents emigrated from three islands in The Azores
archipelago: Pico, São Jorge, and Terceira. His Azorean work is
a result of "growing up Portuguese" and participating in the Holy
Ghost Festas; and also from his seven pilgrimages made to the
nine-island Atlantic chain starting in 1986 when he was a cultural
guest of Portugal's Autonomy government there.
From
1965-74, his Gypsy period, he rambled to every state except Hawaii,
Alabama, and Maine. The open road led him to the Crow Reservation
where in 1971 he danced at the Pierce Siding Sun Dance outside
of Lodge Grass, Montana. His adopted name of Seven Buffaloes was
given by his Native American mother, Marjorie Yellowtail. When
Linda Hasselstrom wrote With Isolation and Great Vats of Time,
in 1986, Coelho summed up her article on him: "It is better to
be unknown in sagebrush and happy than to be known in neon and
sad."
Art
is a poet, novelist, and short story writer; he has written adventure
essays and journalistic articles.
He
is self-taught as a painter and he considers his study of the
masters and his continuing field studies, which led him in 2001
to Van Gogh's Provence(St. Paul's Mausoleum at Saint Remy)to be
at the heart of his work. Art's residence in Big Timber since
1975 has allowed him to widen the horizon of his Montana landscapes.
His other major work focuses on world cultures themes from Africa,
Europe, Asia, Polynesia, and The Mediterranean. He does portraits
of people from other countries as well as those from America.
His other artistic genres include nature, nudes, and satire of
the social and the political arena.
In
1991 he had his first one-man exhibition with To The Azores
and Back Again: In Poetry & Painting. A short story of his,
My First Kill, was collected in the 1994 Prentice-Hall Macmillan
textbook called Fiction 100. The Pushcart Prize(1976-77)featured
his killer horse poem, Like a Good Unknown Poet. His painting
Morning Chore was an illustration in The Portuguese Americans,
Immigrants in Agriculture. Also in 2004 a 45 minute video
featured his reading and art exhibit(Walking Between Kale and
Horse Beans).
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