Little is known about Timothy Bradley Begay. What information that can be pieced together indicates that Begay’s life and career followed much the same trajectory as many of the Native artists of his generation. He trained as a painter first under Dorothy Dunn at The Studio School at the Santa Fe Indian School in 7th and 8th grades (the 1935/36 and 1936/37 school years), and continued his art education at least one more year, in 9th grade, under Dunn’s successor, Gerónima Cruz Montoya, before graduating in 1941.3 Timothy Begay’s classmates at The Studio School included Harrison Begay and Allan Houser.
After graduating high school, Begay was hired by Peter Kilhan (who designed the main light fixtures for the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in New York City) to fabricate decorative ironwork. Kilhan’s firm closed at the start of WWII, and Begay enlisted in 1942, serving through the end of the War. He returned to Santa Fe in 1945, where met his wife, Rosaria, took up welding for work, and continued exhibiting paintings alongside former Studio School classmates and fellow Native artists for a period. The Philbrook Museum of Art has two works by Begay dated 1950, but it would appear that, unlike many of his peers, his art career dwindled in the second half of the 20th century as welding became his full-time and lifelong profession.
