The artist's Indian name (Wa Sa Ba Shinga) means Little Bear. Woodring attended high school and college in Oklahoma. He began painting in 1956, under the tutelage of Acee Blue Eagle. Within a year he was exhibiting throughout the United States and Europe. Woodring was noted as having won more awards at the Philbrook Art Center's show in one year than any artist ever to enter the Annual Exhibition.
A versatile artist, he worked in oil, tempera, watercolor and bronze. Beyond his work as an artist, Woodring was an electrical engineer, an art instructor and a dancer.
Collections including his work in their permanent collections: Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Center for Grand Plains Studies in Lincon, Nebraska; Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Indian Arts and Crafts Board in Washington, D.C.; Museum of American Indian; Museum of New Mexico and at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC.
Dorothy Dunn commented on page 354 of American Indian Painting of the Southwest and Plains Areas (1968) "Although Carl Woodring, Osage, has been a steady worker and an inventive painter, his art has only within the last few years come into the fore with prizes in both Tulsa and Santa Fe. He has explored diverse styles and thus far appears most adept in abstract approaches to complex themes, minimizing detail but concentrating on pattern and essential idea. For organization, he relies mainly upon juxtaposition of darks and lights, balancing areas of well modulated color. While Woodring's compositions are taking on an appearance which might be superficially construed as completely contemporary, they retain basic pre-modern elements and techniques which authenticate them as Indian."
|