Winfield Coleman is an illustrator and painter, writer and editor, lecturer, and ethnological researcher who has worked on books, museum catalogs, and research materials on native peoples and their art for many years. For Wisdom Tales, Mr. Coleman illustrated The Thunder Egg, a Native American story about a girl who discovers the egg of a thunderbird. The text is by Tim J. Myers. Mr. Coleman has specialized, above all, in the art of American Indian peoples. He always devotes a great deal of time to assuring the historical accuracy of his illustrations, as his beautiful paintings for Thunder Egg show.
Winfield Coleman received a B.A. in Anthropology from Cornell University and continued his anthropological studies as a graduate student at Harvard. He later received an M.A. in Fine Arts from New York University. After this, he continued researching Plains Indian art and religion, in which he was supported by two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Mr. Coleman did not stop there with his research and learning about American Indians. He has done archeological and ethnographic research with indigenous peoples in the United States (including Alaska), Mexico, Canada, Peru, and even Borneo. Mr. Coleman has also spent countless hours doing archival research in many of the great museums of the United States, such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Field Museum.
After learning so much, many learned people take the next step and pass their knowledge on to others. Winfield Coleman has done this through his work as a guest lecturer at many conferences, universities, libraries, museums, historical centers, and so on. He has spoken on an amazing range of topics, though the central subject is the importance and meaning of arts in American Indian cultures, although he has also focused at times on the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, or Australia, or elsewhere. In addition, Mr. Coleman has worked for several museums and galleries specialing in tribal art.
All of this research and previous knowledge adds a unique authenticity to the illustrations and paintings that Winfield Coleman creates. One book that he illustrated, American Indian Horse Masks (Hawk Hill Press, 2007), co-written by Mike Cowdrey, Ned and Jody Martin, received the prestigious George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award. The award is presented annually to publications demonstrating excellence in art publishing.
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