"1491" is the date signature on many of the paintings of fine artist and master book illustrator, Sauts. The "1491" signature is a symbol used by Sauts to focus on his New Earth Rising Prophesy. His vision forsees the eminence of pre-1491 Native American Culture rising to a place of universal honor and respect. Sauts exhorts: " May the Lenape People be remembered forever. 1491"

A self Portrait of Sauts - 1491

As a master painter and master book illustrator of our times, Sauts ignores the contemporary world, mostly avoids people and lives in an internal universe, saying of himself: "I go nowhere and see everything." Thomas Merton put it succinctly, "Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

Sauts has illustrated some 225 books - the majority completed early in his career. The last book was published recently. He left the commercial illustration field many years ago. He chose to become a reclusive fine artist, among other things, reconstructing the cosmology of the Lenni Lenape people. His art also frequently revisits great personages of world art, literature and sacred tradition.

Summer Solstice
by Sauts
Sauts sees the artist as ‘Prophet’ and art as ‘Prophecy’.
He is devoted to ‘Art’ in its largest sense. He holds visionary discourse with the likes of Hieronymus Bosch, Richard Wagner, Auguste Rodin, Michelangelo, Albert Durer, Howard Pyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau. He visions these personages into his studio and then paints the ensuing conversation. For Sauts, Artists are ‘heros’ and Art is ‘revolutionary’.

East Coast Native Nations were decimated quickly by the vanguard of European migration and domination of the Eastern United States. Lenni Lenape (Delaware) culture was not as well preserved nor documented as was that of the Plains, Southwestern and Northwestern natives.

Sauts has dedicated much of his life and a significant portion of his painting to re-establishing an artistic record of the Lenni Lenape people.

Yet, his total Art output includes subjects of most of the world’s sacred art and literature. As Sauts paints, he has a picture of Fra Angelica sitting at his heart side that includes a quote from this historic master, "Paint with fury!".

Sauts mixes much of his own pigment and is truly a watercolor master. His underdrawing is reminiscent of great masters.

Cosmic Tortoise
by Sauts
In his most austere times
he has painted on both sides of hard-to-afford fine Italian paper. A patron of Sauts once framed a Sauts painting in glass on both sides so that each painting, front and back, could be alternately displayed. The patron liked the two-for-one price, but then had the dilemma of which painting to conceal. As it is, glass on two sides, he just flips the frame from time to time.

Sauts was trained in the Brandywine-Tradition. Yet, the great painter teachers of Sauts come from the ranks of many well-known artists and their varied traditions.

One path of influence was from Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Thornton Oakley, Henry C. Pitz, and Joe Krush to Sauts.

A second path was from Thomas Eakins and de-Vriendt in Antwerp, John Singer Sargeant, and Jean Leon Gerome through Albert Jean Adolphe to Sauts.

A third wave of influence was from,Gustav Courbet and James McNeil Whistler through Albert Jean Adolphe to Sauts. Robert Riggs also had a direct impact on Sauts.

Visionary spiritual mentors Fra Angelica, Albert Durer, and Hieronymus Bosch round out the traceable influences on Sauts’ own unique art style. Some have dubbed Sauts as the father of the "Indian Valley Tradition-1491 Lenapetime." Yet, his distinctive style reaches well beyond his native roots. His place in art is yet to be determined and likely to be significant in its own time or Lenapetime.

The Change of Heart Center for Life Strategy Gallery
"Vision Quest 1491"
by William Sauts Netamuxwe Bock
"He Who Walks In The Lead"

His diverse book illustrations include many Walter Edmonds stories: Drums Along The Mohawk, The Matchlock Gun, A Fantasy Tom Sawyer, and works by Raskin, Gessner, Campbell, Suskind, Richardson, Bealer, Weslager, Schiller, McCloy, Miller, and others.

He is famed for his prize-winning book, "Richard The Lionhearted" and his portraits of Friar Tuck and the Sherwood Forest characters. He was honored by The American Institute of Graphics Arts and is listed in Who’s Who In American Art.

Before returning to the ancient ways of the Lenape, Sauts graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art on a scholarship. He also received a Masters of Theology from Lutheran Seminary. He now leads a largely solitary life of work in his studio—the state of spirit that he loves most of all.

His Paintings now dot the globe in public and private collections. They are on display in the State Department, the United Nations Headquarters in Vienna, ambassadorial residences, and the Atelier Brambergsteig in Luzern, Switzerland. The largest single collection, 250 paintings and artifacts, are at the Change of Heart Center, Residential Retreat Facility in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Visionary"
by Sauts
His long time partron,
Thomas Merton Brightman, coined the phrase PIP ART for Sauts unique style and message. PIP ART was short for Prophetic Iconographic Painting. Sauts has become Brightman’s visual biographer. They have amassed an ongoing spiritual conversation of hundreds of letters -- which include art sketches by Sauts and stream of consciousness poetry by Brightman.

E. J., Sauts’s intimate companion, calls his work ‘Sautstine’—to honor its majesty in its own time, while being reminiscent of the wonders of past masters as seen in the Sistine Chapel.

HeArt & Soul ArtWorks, a part of the Change of Heart Center in Baltimore, features Sauts as one of several artists that generate art to amplify people’s spiritual journeys of self discovery and healing. HeArt & Soul ArtWorks serves to generate commissions for Sauts and the other artist-community friends of the Change of Heart Center.

Aunt Nora Touching Leaves, Lenape visionary elder and Holy Woman, named Sauts, Netamuxwe—He Who Walks in the Lead. Now that Aunt Nora has gone to walk the Starpath, the spirits have moved Sauts to establish a revival of the ancient Lenape way for which she was revered.

Upon assuming this mssion, Sauts said, "It is now time for us to allow the prophetic word to flow through our works as we re-establish the ancient spiritual ways of the Lenapes here in the heart-center of our original homeland along the Unami Creek in what locals call the Indian Valley." Members of the Sauts family (clan) call him Sakima (Chief) of the Wolf Clan, Unami Band, Lenni Lenape.

Meeleensupeenkwail
"He Who Bears The Gift of Tears"
At The Millennium,2000

by Sauts
Robert Kennedy wrote to Sauts,
"…you must take back some of the original purity of our environment so that all Americans may have the opportunity to see God in the nature that surrounds them."

"The white man hasn’t triumphed. When the Indians vanish, the rest will follow", says Pa’I Antonia Moreira, Guarani Indian Shaman, Argentina.

"ART is the sublime fury of LOVE", said Joan Runner, Lenape Wolf-Clan matron, an admirer of Sautstine Art when asked to state her impressions of his body of artwork.

"Sautstine Art is in a genre of the world’s best spirit-infused art", said patron Brightman. "It (Sautstine PIP Art) bridges worlds in art which have been torn asunder by history. Sauts’s iconography of person, place and event through active imagination is often beyond words, gloriously ineffable".

"Sauts images-the-nation of his ancestry using history, vision and extraordinary art skills. His art is from his visionary imagination and it speaks to the timeless art from the Lascaux caves, orthodox religions, perennial wisdom and esoteric traditions. Where history leaves off, he rides his imagination aided by heart-centered sight into the lives of his Native American ancestors with artful creation of a New Earth, Lenni Lenape cosmology for our contemporary world."


Lenapeland Mysterium Fresco
by William Sauts Netamuxwe Bock, 1491

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