Description about the painting:
This painting is Tony Landon McGregor, a native Texan, received his B.A., B.F.A., and M.Ed. degrees at the University of Texas at Austin. In May 2002, he received a doctoral degree in multicultural special education and art education at the University of Texas at Austin; his dissertation topic focused on the life of Coyote Eyes, a Diné (Navajo) Deaf rug weaver living on the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners area. Dr. McGregor was heavily involved in the planning stages of establishing the National Association of Native American Deaf (NANAD) in Oklahoma City in 1994; later the name changed to Intertribal Deaf Council (IDC). For about four years, he worked as a resident artist-in-education at the Austin Museum of Art in Texas.

Dr. McGregor, usually called "Tony Mac," is a nationally well known Deaf artist and his artworks have been featured at several national and international shows such as "Elements of Deaf Culture" in several cities across the United States, "Seeing through Deaf Eyes" in New York City, Deaf Way II in Washington, D.C., Deaf Culture Centre in Toronto, Ontario, and the Kentucky DeaFestival. Additional information on Dr. McGregor can be found in Deaf Artists in America: Colonial to Contemporary. In addition, illustrations in the five children’s books, Victory Week, Deaf Culture: A to Z, I Love You Story, Hearing Loss: An ABC Book, and ASL Coloring Book were rendered by Dr. McGregor.

Dr. McGregor is probably best known for his beautiful wood burned gourd artworks, which incorporate both ASL and Southwestern Indian symbolism; some are embellished with turquoise cabochons or shells. The richly textured wood burned gourds of Dr. McGregor express his love and deep knowledge of two cultures: the Deaf culture and the Southwest Native American cultures. Dr. McGregor also invented wood burned relief print, a printmaking method of wood burning different images on the wooden block and hand-press inked images onto Japanese traditional paper. He is also noted for his meticulously detailed pen-and-ink drawings, mostly loaded with political and satirical themes containing a variety of issues affecting the Deaf community. Currently, Dr. McGregor teaches Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in a public school setting outside of Austin, Texas. In his spare time, he wood burns gourds or draw/paint Southwestern DeVIA themes.