JOHNNIE DIACON

AFTER TULSA-BASED ARTIST JOHNNIE DIACON (MUSCOGEE CREEK) WAS ADOPTED AS A BABY BY FAMILY friends Delmer (Cherokee) and Helen Diacon, it took a while for his parents to figure out he had problems with his eyesight. The world was a haze to him till the fourth grade, when he was sent to an optometrist. Fitted with corrective lenses, he saw bright colors in paintings hanging on the office walls. “The optometrist was a non-Native and an avid collector of traditional flat-style painting. I saw the images were Indian, and it was almost a spiritual thing.”