Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington and grew up in small towns near the Cascades Mountains. His interest in the mystery and spiritual element of the Indian culture began with childhood. Traveling with his family to historic locations that conveyed Native American history, he was taken with the beauty and mysticism of the Indians individual expression. After finishing high school, he enrolled in college art classes then later attended the Burnley School of Art in Seattle. His art career began with illustration and commercial art but he found it didn't fulfill his creative need and desire for self-expression. This realization led to his introduction into the world of fine art painting. His search to connect more closely with Native American inspiration has led him to reside in Montana.Enthralled with the lore and spirituality of American Indian cultures, his work often depicts these traditional subjects in nontraditional ways. Hawkins captures the raw sense of elements - natural, emotional and cultural. Raw anger. Raw sorrow. Raw vision. And that is a mysterious thing to explain, but even more mysterious to behold. Unlike the classical approach of most Western artists, Rocky Hawkins asks a bit more from each of us who stop to admire one of his paintings: trust.Hawkins often begins with a small study that becomes a catalyst for his larger pieces. He is quick to point out that he is not a storyteller-his concerns are not about where a horse is going or how fast it is running, he explains. But he is interested in the texture of the painting's surface, the relationships of colors, and expressing a feeling about what he sees. Hawkins looks to the Abstract Expressionists as kindred artistic souls-Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and others. Within his Abstract Expressionist images, Rocky Hawkins paints with the gesture of water, the translation of its sound, the suggestion of it, so that a viewer may not see, but will likely sense the flow of the element in a painting.