Earl Biss (1947 - 1998) Earl Biss (Crow), began formal training in art at age sixteen at the legendary Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a student of Fritz Scholder's, Biss was exposed to Abstract Expressionism. Unlike the Abstract Expressionists, however, Earl Biss' works spring from ideas rather than from the process of painting itself. His signature canvases combine mystical landscapes and landscapes and figures with a feeling for the work of European masters such as William Turner, Edvard Munch and the Fauve painters, along with that of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning from the New York School of the 1940s. The invisible energy contained in nature is perhaps Biss' best subject. He translated this force into abstraction in his pictures. His technique embodies the freedom of fluid movement, layering and continuous rhythm, but while he loved to move paint around on the canvas, Earl Biss said that he did his best work when he was dealing with something about which he felt deeply and knew more intimately than theories behind the experimental art that originated in New York and Europe. Earl Biss' works are found in collections nationally, including the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, a complex of five museums described by the New York Times as "among the nation's most remarkable museums."*