Painter Duane Slick’s acrylic paintings blend the subjects of oral and visual Native American traditions with a focus on trickster strategies and modernist/post-modernist painting histories. His black and white series of American flag based paintings (2010-2012) titled The Untraceable Present, explored the contradictions and legacies of Native identity in the grand narratives of American history. His recent work ruminates on the existence of metaphysical economies through visual schematics and the visual influences of pattern designs from the woodland nations of the northeast.

Slick is an artist of Native American descent, the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa and his mother is from the Ho-Chunk Nation of Nebraska. Slick was born in Waterloo, IA.  He earned his BFA  from the University of Northern Iowa, an MFA from the University of California, Davis, he also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe NM  and is now a Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the recipient of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Rockefellar Foundation, and  the School of Advanced Reasearch on the Human Experience in Santa Fe, NM.

Slick has lectured at colleges and universities across the US and his work has been exhibited widely – most recently in a national touring exhibition titled; “Native Art NOW!” organized by the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis and “Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades Of Native Painting at the National Museum of the American Indian. His work is included in collections at The Des Moines Art Center,The Decordova Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the RISD Museum among many others. Slick is currently represented by the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown, MA.