Shonto Begay is a Diné (Navajo) artist, author, and educator, born in Arizona in 1954 to a Navajo medicine man and weaver. Born near Shonto, Arizona, he was one of sixteen children; his mother is a traditional rug weaver of the Bitter Water Clan and his father was a medicine man of the Salt Clan. The family lived in three hogans without running water or electricity, and Shonto spent his childhood herding sheep, reading, and drawing in the landscape that would later shape his art.
As a child, he was forced to attend U.S. government boarding schools, and the traditional life of sustainability and prayer he was raised in helped him endure that experience. He finished high school in Kayenta, then earned an Associate of Fine Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California College of Arts and Crafts. Before turning to art full time, he spent a decade in the 1980s as a National Park Service ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and Navajo National Monument in Arizona, beginning his professional career as a painter, illustrator, and writer in 1983.
Shonto's acrylic paintings are built from small, repeating brushstrokes that echo the cadence of a traditional Navajo blessing prayer, drawing on childhood memory and the ongoing search for balance between people and the Earth. He is the author of Navajo: Visions and Voices Across the Mesa and Ma'ii and Cousin Horned Toad, and the illustrator of The Mud Pony, The Magic of Spider Woman, Navajo Long Walk, and The Boy Who Dreamed of an Acorn. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Northern Arizona, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Booth Western Art Museum, among others.
In 2017, he became Artist in Residence in the Honors Program at Northern Arizona University, where he teaches culture and painting alongside students on the reservation. He continues to live and work in Kayenta, Arizona, painting in a hogan studio about thirty miles from his home, and teaches workshops with the conviction that "art saves lives."
Website
Shonto Begay