A grandmother’s love and guiding hand are life-changing forces. Growing up in Oklahoma on Comanche tribal lands near Fort Sill, a United States Army post, and the Wichita Mountains, John Hitchcock (Comanche/Kiowa/European descent) started making art at age six under the direction of his Comanche grandmother. She nurtured his imagination by encouraging him to draw his complex surroundings. In his youth, Hitchcock experienced the “war outside his window” – hearing helicopters flying overhead, bombs detonating nearby, and more from Fort Sill. In addition to this military landscape, Hitchcock was surrounded by lush nature, diverse wildlife, and the designs and patterns of Kiowa and Comanche beadwork, all of which influenced his work Impact vs. Influence. The work uses symbols like animal heads, tanks, helicopters, birds, butterflies, and an hourglass to speak to the complexity of our shared environment and the “hopeful small moments” inside that chaos. Listen to John Hitchcock’s full album “Bury the Hatchet.” Learn more about this work and others featured in the 2023–2024 exhibition The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans. The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation provided major support for the exhibition. Additional funding was provided by the Director’s Circle and the Tower Project of the National Gallery of Art.