Featured Artist: Sheridan MacKnight

Sheridan MacKnight is a painter and jeweler enrolled in the White Earth Chippewa Tribe and a descendant of the Hunkpapa Lakota people of Standing Rock. She is also of Scottish and French heritage. MacKnight divides her time between Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Her paintings are driven by a passion for storytelling, using ink and paint to convey emotion through expressive line, imagery, and design. More importantly, her work serves as a powerful connection to her cultural roots, an essential aspect of her artistic practice. MacKnight’s  paintings have earned numerous honors at some of the world's most prestigious Indigenous art markets, including the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market in Phoenix, Arizona.

MacKnight's work draws from a variety of cultural influences, but she is particularly inspired by the Native Pueblo and Plains artists who studied under Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School during the early decades of the 20th century. Their influence is evident in her strong compositions, refined linework, and ability to create visually clean, graphic paintings that weave together narratives of family, heritage, and cultural legacy.

"Art is a beautiful, subtle tool I use to teach stories of this country's First Peoples—a story often ignored in our history books," says MacKnight. "Teaching the plight, as well as the strength and resilience of the Lakota people through my paintings, is the reason I create."

MacKnight has exhibited extensively throughout the United States. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona; the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts; the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire; the San Diego Museum of Art in San Diego, California; and the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana.