Navaho Now

Malcolm Furlow was an award-winning painter of the American Southwest. He attended the University of Texas on a track scholarship with a major in art, but eventually dropped out of school after a professor discouraged Malcolm from pursuing his style of painting. He spent the next eighteen years as a musician, playing the sax, bass, and guitar. He has been referred to, fondly, as a renaissance man who embraced the life of a cowboy, musician, intellectual, and artist. His career included working for Walt Disney Studios making models, publishing a book for Kodak on photographing miniatures, working for Italian Vogue, and many resources on model railroading.

In 1987 Furlow decided to go back to his first love, painting. Furlow began drawing American Indians at the age of six, when his father had Malcolm accompany him on business trips throughout New Mexico. Beginning with watercolors, Furlow realized the medium was ill suited for large canvases and switched to brightly colored acrylic images of Native Americans. About his subject matter and painting style, Furlow has said, “I knew I wanted to say it with color because that’s the emotion of it. I’ve got to make the viewer feel what I feel . All I’m trying to do is paint them as they are – paint their culture, their dignity and their stature . I didn’t want to do portraits of Indians, I wanted to say something about the human condition.”

His work has received many accolades, including the Silver award from the Sorbonne, and the highly coveted Gold Award from the world-renown Luxembourg Museum, Paris.