All Book Proceeds go to the Eugene Landry Exhibition Project.

Eugene “Gene” Landry (1937-1988) was a noted Native American artist who worked from a wheelchair. His personal story is one of perseverance, of an artist who created despite setbacks, always with humor and style.
Of Hoh and Quileute descent, Gene was born in Taholah, on the Quinault Reservation. Adopted as an infant, he was an enrolled member of the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe. During his formative years, there were no practitioners of traditional native arts living on the reservation. Gene developed his budding artistic talent along classical Western European lines until illness struck during his senior year of high school. In the early 1960s, after years of hospitalization and rehab, he continued his art studies in Seattle.
During Gene’s lifetime his tribe faced many political and cultural challenges. Landry’s body of work provides a lens into this transitional era. Interviews with his portrait models act as a bridge, giving context to mid-century history. Landry painted the world around him and the people in it. As one elder said, “I can’t really talk about Gene without talking about tribes and reservations. I can’t separate Gene’s story from that story.”