Adele Collins facts for kids

Adele Collins (born January 24, 1908 – died March 7, 1996) was an important Native American painter from the 20th century. She was born in Blanchard, Oklahoma. Adele was a member of the Chickasaw Nation, and she also had Choctaw and Irish family roots.

In her paintings, Collins often switched between showing things as they look in real life (called representational art) and using shapes and colors to express ideas (called abstraction). She mixed her Chickasaw and Choctaw heritage with modern European art styles. A famous expert named Rennard Strickland said Adele Collins was one of the first important Native American painters after World War II.

Her Early Life

Adele Collins, whose maiden name was Victor, was born in Blanchard, Oklahoma. Her family moved between homes in Blanchard and Lindsay, Oklahoma, when she was young. Her father, Emmett L. Victor, was Chickasaw and Choctaw. Her mother, Lee Desmond, was Irish-American.

Adele's parents taught her about their family's history. They encouraged her to be proud of her Native American background. Her Native American name was Puccanubbi, which means "baby." Even though she didn't learn the Choctaw and Chickasaw languages as a child, she studied them later in life.

Adele went to public school in Lindsay, Oklahoma, until 6th grade. She then attended Mount Saint Mary's Academy for 7th and 8th grade. When her family's money became tight, she moved to St. Elizabeth's Indian Boarding School in Purcell, Oklahoma. She finished high school there in 1926.

Facing Hard Times

The Great Depression was a very difficult time for Adele's family. They lost their land and much of their money. In 1932, her father passed away. This was a big emotional and financial loss for the family.

After this, Adele moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She went to beauty college and became a hairstylist. She then moved to Texas and worked near Dallas for a few years. During this time, she also took some classes in drama and ballet.

Marriage and Travel

While working in Dallas, Adele met Patrick Collins. They got married in 1934 in Yuma, Arizona. They were married for 43 years until Patrick's death in 1977. In the first year of their marriage, they lived in New York City and Chicago, Illinois.

Adele and Patrick loved to travel. They spent winters in places like Cuba, Florida, Canada, and Mexico. In 1947, they moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, for Patrick's job. They lived there until 1974. In Las Vegas, they often visited nearby pueblos and important historical sites. They also went to art shows. Patrick was the one who first showed Adele the world of fine art. They traveled to see art shows, museums, and concerts in many cities, including New York, Chicago, and places in Oklahoma and New Mexico.

In 1974, they moved back to Oklahoma City. Patrick's health was getting worse, and he passed away in 1977.

Her Art Career

Adele Collins started painting after she and Patrick moved to Las Vegas. She began taking classes at the Art League in Las Vegas. She studied there for more than eight years. She also took private lessons from Emalita Newton Terry, who was an abstract and expressionist painter.

Through her lessons with Emalita, Adele became very interested in how art could show feelings and ideas without being exactly like real life. She started to move away from painting things exactly as they looked. Instead, she experimented with different levels of abstraction. For example, some of her landscape paintings, like Pueblo (1962), became almost completely abstract. This painting is now at the National Museum of the American Indian.

As her career grew, Collins also used realism in her portraits. She painted historical scenes and stories from Native American tales and mythology. A curator named Jeanne Snodgrass King encouraged Adele to include her Native American heritage in her art.

Adele's portraits often showed people from the Five Civilized Tribes and other tribes in Western Oklahoma and the Southwest. She used bright colors in her paintings of ceremonies, hoop dancers, and Chickasaw and Choctaw myths. Adele took modern European and American painting styles and used them to show modern-day Native Americans in Oklahoma and across America.

Collins's artwork was shown in many galleries across the United States. Some of these included:

• The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (1966)
• The McClean County Arts Center in Bloomington, Illinois (1991)
• The Jacobson House Native Art Center in Norman, Oklahoma

Her Later Years and Death

In the mid-1990s, Adele Collins's health made it hard for her to keep painting and showing her work. She passed away in Blanchard, Oklahoma, on March 7, 1996.