This painting of a lone coyote by Olivia Pendergast can be found all over Kayenta and has come to be the face and mascot of Kayenta’s Coyote Gulch Art Village. Here in Kayenta we all know the picture but people probably know very little about the artist. Here is a short profile of Olivia Pendergast. For more information or to see some of her recent work go to www.oliviapendergast.com.
Biography – Olivia Pendergast (Information from www.oliviapendergast.com.)
Olivia was raised on a small farm in the Appalachian Mountains in a town called Sugar Grove. Her parents encouraged her artistic nature by putting a pottery wheel in the barn and often doing art on the picnic table in the fields behind the farmhouse.
Olivia’s evident need to create through art began in the crib and perhaps even before, as she inherited her Grandfather’s, (who painted as an Abstract Expressionist), predisposition to live the artist’s lifestyle.
She attended Columbus College of Art and Design’s five-year BFA program where she majored in Illustration but took every Fine Art course that could be squeezed into her semester’s tuition. After working for five years in the LA film industry as a conceptual designer, the pull to create her own work through the means of painting was too much to resist. She cut up her credit cards and moved to a cabin in the mountains of Utah to paint, full-time.
In 2007, Olivia, formally known as “Holly Mae”, moved to Seattle to pursue her creative endeavors in the Northwest. In 2008 she lived in Malawi (Africa) for 4 months while painting the amazing people. In 2009 she returned twice to Malawi to work and paint and in 2010 she spent time in Haiti of which she is currently creating a body of work.
She has been working and playing, painting fulltime, for twelve years. In that time her paintings have won national awards, shown in museums and shows all over the country and her work is currently shown galleries in Utah.
