SON OF PICASSO was born Ben Nelson. He was born of Kiowa, Navajo, Taos Pueblo, and Delaware descent. As a child, he was an art prodigy, winning multiple awards at Indian Market as a teenager.
When he was thirteen, his intricate ledger-style watercolors were featured on the cover of Indian Arts magazine, drawing the attention of then President Bill Clinton, who became a collector of his art. As did Princess Diana, Elton John, and John Travolta. Since then, he has won pretty much every prestigious award in the Native art world.
In his spare time, Son of Picasso has studied political science; is a filmmaker, licensed paramedic, and wrestler; and has just launched his own fashion line.
I read that when you were five, you saw and painted blue, pink, and purple horses.
Yeah, the horses. My dad was Yellowman, a great artist who was my teacher from the beginning. He’s who I learned from.
I remember looking through his raw materials and finding this old ledger book. It was this gentleman’s war diary of all the battles he was in; how he was at Little Big Horn; all the way until he had to give up his rifle. It was gripping. This man created art but didn’t realize he was creating art. He was just writing his diary. Just coping with the change of time. You know what I mean?
So right around that time, my family was driving in northeastern New Mexico, and we came on Inscription Rock, where Coronado’s expeditions would all carve their Spanish surnames. I was blown away by the idea that these people were long gone, but they left a signature that will last forever. It left me with the idea of wanting to leave a legacy, and from then on, I was a painter.
But you work in lots of mediums, right? You have a fashion line.
Yeah, I’ve explored this concept of getting off the canvas, and that led into fashion.
My fashion line is called Products of My Environment. Our newest collection is called Model Citizen, and it was a play on the idea of counterculture mixed with graffiti culture.
I feel like in native fashion, everyone is kind of working off one another’s work. I’ve been a painter, a graffiti artist, a graphic designer, and a photographer. Bringing all of those genres into clothing, well, it looks pretty different. It was just a chance for me to not play by any rules.
You were a graffiti artist?
Yes. I have really tried to combine my graffiti art with my fine art. In the past, I almost had to hide that side of myself. A lot of the people that were collecting my work in the ’90s were very conservative and didn’t want to see a native kid with long hair on a skateboard.
I had to be that model citizen. I had to play a part, so I kept these two lives separate; I would never tell my collectors I was a graffiti artist, and I would never tell my skateboarding friends I was a real artist.
But as these lives would cross, the painting or the graffiti would be influenced by the other one, and the result would blow everybody’s minds. I got to the point where I embraced both; I didn’t need to be that model citizen.
Instead, I can just be me: the real artist. That’s when I renamed myself Son of Picasso. I used to be named Ben Nelson. But, you know, I’ve visited a lot of reservations all over America, and I met a lot of natives with the last name Nelson. And I realized there was, like, some cavalry soldier was going from fort to fort to fort just naming natives after himself.
So I changed to Son of Picasso. My family called it my Muhammad Ali moment where I’m like, You’re not gonna call me Cassius anymore.
I chose that because my father paved the way for me in the art world. Paving the way is hard. There’s a lot of gatekeeping with Native art, and he’s 100% self-taught; he very much had to rely on just his talent. That has made him one of the greatest Native artists.
So I thought, How do I give honor back to my father? As Natives, when we introduce ourselves to someone, we talk about our parents first as a way to give back to them. So I was like, Well, who’s one of the greatest masters of this art world? Picasso. So, Son of Picasso.
Learn more at thesonofpicasso.com
Photo SFM
