I put all my time into Indian rights, and I think this is something I know something about, and I think that my time is best spent insofar as my political views are concerned.
The key is in remaining just aloof enough from a painting so that you know when to stop.
Another time factor is output: proofing and printing. That is, getting your work out of the computer and onto paper and having it satisfy you. It can be time consuming and expensive.
Instead of kids just hearing about beads and baskets and fringe, and about what 'was' and 'were,' we present Native American culture as a living contemporary culture.
Sixteen million colors in your palette are hard for any artist, especially a beginner, to turn down.
It never occurred to me that I was important enough to have some politician go out of his way to silence me. I only found out about it in the '80s by accident - a broadcaster announced they received letters of commendation from the White House for having suppressed my music. My career was so highly impacted in the U.S. it will never recover.
But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools.
When somebody says, 'Oh, Buffy, you're such a warrior for peace', I stop them and say, 'No, I'm not really a warrior for peace. What I promote is alternative conflict resolution'.
When we draw on the tablet, the drawing shows up on the computer screen. If we have chosen to tell the computer that the stylist is to behave like a piece of chalk, or a pen, or a wet brush, it will.
I lead a charmed life.
The paintings are transferred from my computer to a disk, and I can hand it to the printer this way; or I can modem the painting to the printer over the phone lines from my house in Hawaii.
I was adopted without the benefit of papers. They used to hide adoption in the forties; I don't know why. Perhaps it was shameful. I could have been kidnapped - there are all kinds of crazy things that people have done - but I got over dealing with that a long time ago.
I've always had that attitude about my career: it's something that I do, but it's not my whole life. I have a real life, a personal life: I've got a lot of chickens, I've got a horse, I've got a kitty-cat, I've got a lot of goats, I've got animals all over the place.
Digital imaging allows both groups to rise above the limitations of mess and clutter and mechanics, and apply our talents to creating images limited only by our imaginations.
If I'm interrupted, it's just a minor inconvenience, but not a disaster, because it's easy to get back where I was: that is, the paint has not changed consistency; the light has not moved.
I was an infant when I was living in Canada, but when I was adopted, I was a baby, so I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, and I returned to Saskatchewan as - in my late teens.
I see myself as having three families: my birth family, the family that raised me, and my Cree family, who I was reunited with in my late teens, so I consider myself to be lucky.
My first Macintosh was a 128k machine which I upgraded to 512k the minute it became possible.
I'm told I was born in Canada, but I was adopted, and I grew up in Maine and Massachusetts.
I've had a different kind of career on the periphery of show business. I've never been on any kind of corporate timetable whereby every six months I have to pop out a record like a pulping mill. I've called my own shots. When I get tired, I take time off.
