The Force is with him: Artist Ryan Singer blends pop culture-meets-the-Rez with a touch of humor

Mar. 10—When Ryan Singer was growing up near Tuba City, Arizona, he was already charging $5 to draw "Star Wars" characters and heavy metal bands for his classmates.

Today he shows his pop culture-meets-the-Rez paintings at Santa Fe's Blue Rain Gallery and the Santa Fe Indian Market. Humor flows throughout his canvases like an anodyne.

The Albuquerque-based Diné artist recently earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of New Mexico, where he is in a collaborative lithography class with the Tamarind Institute.

That road to the easel took a circuitous route. As a child, Singer gained inspiration from comic books and watching his uncle Ed Singer painting in his studio. In the summers, he attended Navajo sheep camp, where he was taught to understand the Navajo language despite not being a fluent speaker.

"I enjoyed the freedom (of making art) at 4-5 years old," Singer said. "I was already drawing realistic figures. I was into 'Star Wars' and KISS."

At the age of 5, he drew Gene Simmons blowing flames.

"I was already collecting comic books like 'Spider-Man' and 'The Hulk,' " Singer said. "I thought the covers were more interesting than the inside that I couldn't even read. I would just love the solitude; it was almost like time warping."

A turning point came when he was working for the U.S. Forest Service at the Grand Canyon. He felt he really didn't fit in with his colleagues, who had no interest in the arts. He enrolled at Arizona State University, which "really expanded my mind."

"I started doing art shows," he said. "I could do an art show and make $5,000; $10,000 at Indian Market."

He moved to Albuquerque to finish school at UNM.

His recent Blue Rain show, "Nostalgic Mythos" weaves together reservation landscapes with Godzilla, Baby Yoda and flying saucers.

His acrylic on canvas "Bee Chaha' ohí" shows a Diné woman holding a parasol next to a lamb.

"That is a parody/homage," Singer said, explaining he was inspired by Claude Monet's famous painting of his wife and son, "Woman with a Parasol."

His "Cheii Meets the King" features a horned toad staring up at a glaring Godzilla in a Monument Valley landscape.

"In Navajo culture, the horned toad is considered sacred and our grandpa, so we call him Cheii," Singer said, adding the horned toad bears a resemblance to dinosaurs.

"When I was a little kid, I had a Godzilla toy," he added. "It's all nostalgia; I watched all the Godzilla shows."

"Child and Lamb" pictures an elderly Diné woman cradling Baby Yoda.

"That's also a take on the idea of mother and child (dating) to the Renaissance," the artist said. "You can even trace these back to Egyptian art. All art is regurgitated and redone and copied."

In "Leaving New Mexico," a coyote soars over a Southwestern mountains and mesas landscape in a flaming truck beneath a UFO.

"That was a take on those old cartoons that came out in the '70s," Singer said. "They'd have the monster driving — like Rat Fink.

"I think Indigenous and Navajo people in general always use some kind of humor as a survival mode. Navajos are always sitting around joking."

The flying saucer is a nod to Roswell. "Outlaw" resembles a hybrid of an octopus, bat wings and cowboy boots.

"That's like an alien H.P. Lovecraft," Singer said, referring to the horror writer.

"Summer of '93" references Singer's own close encounter.

"That's a triangle UFO," he said, "which actually happened to me and my friend when I was working in Window Rock.

"This thing flew right over us," he continued. "There was no noise and then it disappeared. We were freaked out for a long time. Even to this day, I question, 'Did that really happen?' "

At 16, Singer's first completed painting was a self-portrait of himself wearing a "Batman" T-shirt, his head wrapped like a mummy.