Native American Artist Quincy Tahoma, a highly gifted Navajo painter, studied at the Santa Fe Indian School along with other well-regarded Indian artists such as Harrison Begay and Andy Tsihnahjinnie. Art teacher Dorothy Dunn encouraged her students to paint in a flat and decorative style specific to early 20th-century, studio-taught painting, but Tahoma incorporated more action and varied techniques in his work. The artist spent most of his life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, producing hundreds of paintings over two decades from the mid 1930s to 1956. Due in large measure to his premature death, Tahoma's contribution to Native American art, as well as the triumphs and tragedies in his life, have remained somewhat invisible to the generations that followed.

The authors, Charnell Havens and Vera Marie Badertscher, have spent more than a decade researching his life in preparation to write a book-length biography. They are also compiling a registry of Tahoma's paintings in order to document the development of his artwork, much of which has never before been viewed by the public.

This website, which already has been an invaluable source of input from Tahoma friends, serves three purposes:
1. To introduce Quincy Tahoma and his groundbreaking work, hopefully stimulating your desire to know more about him;
2. To tell you about the research project, sharing some of the special moments of our journey; and
3. To invite those with information about Quincy Tahoma to share it with us, thereby enriching our understanding of his life.

Welcome to our Quincy Tahoma site!

Charnell Havens and Vera Marie Badertscher