Pablita Velarde (Tse Tsan)

Santa Clara painter, the mother of artist Helen Hardin and the grandmother of artist Margarete Bagshaw.

Her Tewa name means "golden dawn."

She studied in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at Dorothy Dunn's Santa Fe Art School. She worked first in watercolor, but then learned to make natural pigments from hand-ground minerals, which she used to make what she called "earth paintings."

The French government awarded her the Palmes Academiques in 1954; in 1977 she received the New Mexico Governor's Award, and in 1990 the National Women's Caucus for Art gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award.

See

http://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/band/artwork.html

http://newmexicohistory.org/people/pablita-velarde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablita_Velarde