PALOUSE PEOPLE Paintings from the WSC Art Colony at Nespelem by Dan & Joyce Leonard

Twelve portraits of members of the Colville Confederated Tribes, painted by Florence Daniels Brown (1908-1997), will be on display at the Depot until further notice. The artist, my Aunt Florence, attended Columbia University, where she earned an MA in Art. The paintings were produced during several Washington State College summer art colonies, held in Nespelem in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Florence traveled by bus to Nespelem to attend two of them.
Students at the art colony produced approximately 800 paintings over four years, of which fewer than 100 are now known. Until now, the paintings have never been on public display. Within a year we expect to donate them to the Colville Tribal Museum in Coulee Dam. When we made our initial contact with the museum, one tribal artist exclaimed, “That’s my grandfather!”
Stop by the Depot on any Saturday afternoon between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM to see these paintings, and plan to attend a program my wife Joyce and I will be presenting on them on December 12 at the Pullman Depot, Suite H (next to the train cars)
(excerpted from a longer piece by Dan Leonard)