Matthew Bearden is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. When he was a senior in high school, the school asked him to draw the school mascot for the cover of the yearbook. The mascot for Hominy, Oklahoma High School is the Osage Brave. Bearden has stated that drawing the mascot “is what essentially got me into Native American subject matter.” Bearden lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. Bearden is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.