Artist: Lee Bocock
Lee Bocock has been painting all her life. Her first exhibition came at age five when one of her drawings was included in a showing at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. With both Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry, she often selects subjects that honor the cultural traditions of the past, as with Medicine Man.
“People have always been warm and receptive to my paintings, but what I especially want my paintings to do is to catch the viewer’s eye and still enrich them to appreciate the American Indian,” she said in an interview with The Daily Oklahoman in 1987.
Her other piece in the Judicial Center collection is Mama’s Little Dancer, a timeless illustration of the connection between mother and child. Children play an important role for Bocock, not only as subjects in her artwork, but also in her daily activities. She has volunteered countless hours teaching art programs for public school students and also served for many years on the Moore school board. In 1994, she was appointed by Governor Frank Keating to serve as a member of the Oklahoma Arts Council Board.
Bocock has exhibited her work in numerous shows including the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonials in Gallup, New Mexico, the Franco-American Institute Exhibit in Rennes, France, as well as Arts Festival Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery. Both Medicine Man and Mama’s Little Dancer were part of the Oklahoma History Center collection and are on permanent loan to the Oklahoma Judicial Center Collection.