Following the maze of information about Quincy Tahoma’s life (1918-1956) has consumed over ten years. At times we were tempted to abandon the biography, and instead, write the live mystery story that we were living. This blog will begin to tell that back story.

Although his paintings are acclaimed, and people still compete at auctions to own one of the thousand or so paintings he left behind, few people could answer the basic questions that Charnell started asking back in 1996.

Where was he born? When? Were there family members still living? Where did he learn to paint? What and who were the major influences on his art?

Many compendiums of information about American Indian Artists include short biographies of Tahoma. As soon as Charnell and Vera Marie were able to find people who knew Tahoma during his lifetime, they learned that very few of the “facts” published about him were correct.

This blog will reveal some of the backstory of writing a biography of a Navajo artist, born before birth records were kept. To complicate matters, he invented much of the information about his origins that he shared with friends during his lifetime. We were fortunate to interview more than fifty people who either knew Tahoma personally or knew him through stories of their parents or other relatives.

We will share some of those stories here, and encourage anyone who can add more personal knowledge to let us know.  We welcome your contact at charnell@tahoma.info or veramarie@tahoma.info