Untitled (Taking Down a Finished Rug)

Untitled (Taking Down a Finished Rug) is a painting by artist Harrison Begay. It’s nine inches tall and eight inches wide, painted on paper with casein paint and tempera.

The Studio Style of this Native American painting is visually conveyed in its blank background, distinct outlines of the characters, and lack of perspective and shading. For more about this painting style and the history of this painting, read the “About this Artwork” section above.

Most of the painting is taken up by a tall weaving loom that holds a finished rug. The loom is made from horizontal and vertical pieces of beige, unpainted wood.  A woman stands to the right of the frame, reaching up with her right hand and holding a rope while the rope’s loose end is in her left hand. She is in the process of releasing the rope and taking the rug off the loom. The loom looks like an open picture frame, and the rug hangs inside the frame, mounted to flat strips of wood called tension bars at its top and bottom edges. The tension bars are suspended from the loom by thin gray pieces of yarn, which wrap around the frame. First we’ll describe the woman, and then the rug.

The woman wears a dark green, long-sleeved shirt tucked into a light green skirt. Her shirt is collared and has five small buttons closing the top, and a silver necklace with blueish green stones hangs from her neck. Her skirt is tight at her waist and flares out to a pleated bell shape at its bottom near her ankles. Around her waist she wears a dark orange wrapped woven belt decorated with white horizontal stitches. Beneath her skirt she wears traditional knee-high moccasins, white on her leg and at her feet made of dark orange leather wrappings. She also wears bright blue earrings and has dark brown or black hair pulled back into a traditional Diné bun known as a tsiiyéél. The bun is vertical and has two round sections, one on top and one on bottom, separated and held in place by a wrapping of light red yarn.

The rug is longer than it is wide. It has a gray background with three sections of white and red geometric designs common to Navajo rugs. A center section is separated from the top and bottom sections by three lines of dark blue, white and red which run horizontally across the weaving. In between these lines is a large light red diamond shape with a white border. The diamond is wider than it is tall, and the edges of the diamond are staggered as if to resemble stairs. This pattern is commonly called a stair-stepped diamond. In the middle of the light red diamond is a small dark red diamond with a downward pointing triangle above it and an upward pointing triangle below it. The design in the top third and bottom third sections of the rug are identical but mirrored, containing a red triangle pointing down toward the center like an arrow pointing, and a red and white border in each corner which ascends or descends in a similar stair-like style to the center design.