The Standard Bearers | Doug Hyde

Doug Hyde, Arizona Wildlife, wax model, 4 x 18.

Recent years have brought Doug Hyde honors befitting his nearly 50-year career as a sculptor celebrating his Nez Perce, Assiniboine, and Chippewa heritage. In 2018, Arizona’s Governor proclaimed him Artist of the Year. In 2019, he completed an installation in Joseph, OR, called THE RETURN. One element of the two-piece monument is an 8-foot-tall slab of red granite with the life-size silhouette of an Indian woman cut out of the stone’s center. “That represents the Nez Perce being forced from their lands in 1877,” says Hyde. Nearby stands a 6-foot-tall bronze of the same woman, signifying the return of Chief Joseph and 268 Nez Perce survivors in 1885. “It’s one of the works I’m most proud of,” Hyde says.

Since then, however, things have “been pretty darn tough,” Hyde admits. Debbie, his wife of 30 years, passed away last June after a long illness. “My artwork was my way of creating things to impress her,” the artist says. Frequent walks through the zoo near his home in Prescott, AZ, however, eventually inspired him to begin developing an intricate two-panel sculpture on the wildlife of northern and southern Arizona. Recently, he sent new works to the Masters of the American West show, and others are headed for the Prix de West in Oklahoma City in June and Quest for the West come September at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis.

Hyde feels the joy of creation returning. “I have one new stone almost 6 feet tall, Spanish marble with golden sunrise colors,” he enthuses. “I did a working drawing on it of a golden eagle sitting on top of all these rocks. But I really won’t know what it’s going to be until I actually start carving.”

Hyde is represented by Nedra Matteucci Galleries, Santa Fe, NM; Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ; Broadmoor Galleries, Colorado Springs, CO; and the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ.
–Norman Kolpas

This story appeared in the May 2021 issue of Southwest Art magazine.