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Allan, I agree that you have to capture the soul regardless from which ethnicity you are taking your inspiration from and that you should implement your artistic touch to make a lasting impression.
You brought up the native Indians and I am going to use them to further the point I am trying to make. Unless you are invited to an Indian reservations and are granted entry to their special ceremonies are you truly reprenting "Western Art" if you paint them in their colorful costumes performing during a staged cultural event? Very seldomly do you see a Native American represented in art as anyone different then what our common age old perception of him is. In other words a man with feathery head dress and a hawk nose. I am of course exagerating, but I don't recall seeing paintings of a Native American as a teacher or engineer.
Thanks to a certain degree of typecasting we associate people with the images we have been presented about them. So as a "Western Artist" are we doing the Native American a favor by continuing to portray him as he lived in the 19th century, because we like the colorful and adventures looking images or should we show a true representation of him as he lives today? The same applies to the imagery of the Orient. You have to travel to very remote places and gain privileged access to paint people in exotic costumes and settings, otherwise you have to work from images of Miiddle Easterners in blue jeans (exaggerated to make the point).
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