Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

Who are we?  No, really. As creative people, what forms the psychic architecture of personal identity—the underlying guarded stuff not normally visible in flashes of outer self expression?  Where does it come from?

There is, of course, the modern Mad Men notion in advertising that unless we define who we are, someone else will do it for us.  But must we really brand ourselves?

John Potter makes no attempt to conceal his identity, but, for a man in his position, further revelation is tricky.



John Potter, left, joins Scott Frazier in offering a blessing to wild wolves in Yellowstone.


Potter inhabits uncommon terrain, certainly as it pertains to the places where most artists associated with “wildlife art” originate.

Our story begins not with Potter’s origin; rather, on a bitter cold day in winter 1995. Back then, he and Scott Frazier stood in Yellowstone, their faces smudged with the ethereal scent of burning cedar and exhalations of tobacco smoke. They held raptor feathers in their hands. They sang in a cadence of words that has sprung organically from the soil;  however it was a language that seemed foreign to most of the onlookers around them.     

These two men wearing their hair in braids had embraced one another as adopted brothers;  however, Potter and Frazier were well aware of the reality that they would have been sworn mortal enemies during the generation of their grandfathers.

Arriving in the Lamar Valley of...