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Frank Big Bear(born 1953) is a Native American artist. He creates multi-layered colorful drawing in his signature Prismacolor pencil on paper medium about Native American identity as well as portraiture.

Background
Frank Big Bear was raised on the White Earth Reservation and moved to Minneapolis at the age of 14. He attended the University of Minnesota for about a year. There he studied with George Morrison whom had a major impact on Big Bear's thinking. His work comes to life upon inspection with multiple layers of imagery and a cubist influenced style.

In 1987, distinguished art critic Jean Fisher commented in a piercing review of Big Bear's work, then on view at Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis. In the review she discussed the links between Big Bear's work and surrealism, both of which recognize the value of the unconscious.

Big Bear also references media clichés constructed from indigenous symbols, as he illuminates their misappropriation and reinvents them as emblems of survivorship.