Decade: Autoportrait '77 (Tiptoe Mt.) is a print from Indiana’s Decade: Autoportraits, Vinalhaven Suite.
Regarding the series Indiana wrote: “A decade ago, in the early ’70s I began a series of paintings, autobiographical in intent, which, because they spanned the ten years of my life in the ’60s, I called Decade: Autoportraits. These grew to be three sets, or, 30 paintings in all, of differing sizes, which touched upon some of the important occasions, places and people who figured conspicuously in my life during that very tumultuous decade for an artist in America—truly a golden decade.
Upon coming to Maine to live permanently in the late ’70s I decided to record the more recent decade and the ten years which included part of each on the island of Vinalhaven in the Penobscot Bay.”
He also penned a statement explaining each individual print:
"Mecca set the time for the choice of words in this print and it was the year which saw my largest work executed as the basketball floor of the Mecca Arena in Milwaukee, home base for the Bucks and the Marquette Warriors. Basketball was the prevailing passion in my home state and I found the same frenzy for the game in Maine. This year I was also guest of President Carter in the White House, here coded “Casablanca” to fit the exoticism of Mecca. I visited San Antonio, home of my largest American collector, during the course of my second museum retrospective, but then it was once my home when I took basic training for the Air Force there."