James Auchiah

James Auchiah, also known as Tse Koy Ate (Big Bow), was born in 1906 in Meers, Oklahoma, and attended St. Patrick’s Mission School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, before studying art at the University of Oklahoma. Auchiah was one of the Kiowa Five, a group of in-fact six Kiowa artists — along with Spencer Asah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke and Lois Smoky — who created a new painting style influenced by Plains hide painting and Ledger art, and were inspired by social and ceremonial scenes of Kiowa life and its oral histories. The minimal backgrounds, flat perspective, and use of solid color-fields are characteristic of the Kiowa Five painting style.