Ernie Franklin was born on the Navajo reservation during World War II and spoke only Navajo until he was taken away to boarding school.  He grew up familiar with guns, horses, hard work and the desert landscape of his homeland.  His high school years were spent at the old Albuquerque Indian School (there were no public schools on the Res in those days) and he spent some time at the Art Institute in Santa Fe and Colorado A&M before his studies were cut short by a stint in Vietnam.

Franklin is largely self-taught as an artist, though he has taken art classes at the University of New Mexico and elsewhere.  In the service he got some training as a draftsman/illustrator.  What he really enjoyed was doing caricatures of his fellow GIs.  After the war he held jobs with the Navajo Tribe and Job Corps before ending up at Wingate High School where he worked for the next twenty years.

Ernie Bulow taught English and drama at Wingate High School in the sixties, and he and Franklin became friends. By 1980 Bulow was pretty much Franklin’s agent, selling most of his paintings, setting up one-man shows, and entering him in various competitions.  Over the years Franklin has won countless ribbons and awards at Gallup Ceremonial, Navajo Fair, New Mexico State Fair and other venues.

For the last decade Franklin has been closely associated with Tony Hillerman, illustrating him in magazines, books and original paintings.  His extra-illustrated first editions have become very collectable in recent years.  The story of how he perfected drawing in books is told at some length in FIRSTS: The Book Collector’s Magazine, Vol. I No. 4. April 1991, ($8.50).    There is also a lot of biographical information in an article in New Mexico Magazine, Aug 1996, ($4.00).

Posters

Watercolors

Illustrated Tony Hillerman Novels