High Road Artist

Working Artist on the High Road to Taos

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Introduction to New Mexico

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As it turns out, Mabel loaned Georgia a little house situated on her vast property for three months, or longer if wanted. This pivotal summer is how Georgia first discovered New Mexico, ultimately leading her to Abiquiú, which became her permanent home.

Beatrice Mandelman, My Favorite Taos Modernist

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Mandelman was quickly captivated by the high desert light, the rugged terrain, the living traditions of the Taos Pueblo, and the vibrant artist community she encountered upon arrival. She came at a time when realism and abstraction were sharply at odds in Taos, yet she easily built friendships across both artistic camps.

Marco Oviedo: Keeping Art Alive

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Marco’s artistic self-assurance was forged in an uncommon childhood. He grew up with his aunt who ran a prominent art gallery in Mexico City. Pablo Picasso spent time with their family and they were neighbors with Frida Kahlo seeing her frequently.

Renaissance Man: Alvaro Cardona-Hine

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Alvaro didn’t start painting until he was in his 40s. He describes it as his most joyful medium: “…all that splashing around with color.” It also provides his livelihood. I know Alvaro primarily as a painter.

Centinela Traditional Arts, Lisa Trujillo

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Lisa Trujillo married into a fiber arts heritage that goes back seven generations. She acknowledges both the gift and the privilege of coming into such a rich legacy, as well as the heavy responsibility that accompanies it.

Centinela Traditional Arts, Irvin Trujillo

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Ultimately, Irvin speaks a truth that resonates with so many who choose the artist’s path: no matter the challenges, we continue. We take leap after leap into the unknown, creating art simply because it is a part of who we are.

Anna Karin: The Old Adobe Church, the Wolf and Survival

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My friend, Anna Karin, moved to Truchas over six years ago now, arriving with her red wolf named Sheba and an orange cat. She was at the end. All of her resources were gone and she didn’t know what to do next, so she did what was in front of her: She rented an old adobe church with a house in back.

Taking “The Walk” With William deBuys

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He recalls sitting in the sun on the portal having coffee that first morning. “As I sat there with my mind somewhat disassembled, the first sentence of what would later be The Walk came to me, and it came all of a sudden, just like a little package, as though a bird had brought it and laid it on my lap.”

Perspective

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Then it comes so clear to me: life is not what we leave behind. That’s history. Life is the living of it, in these moments when our hearts are beating in our chests, when our eyes gaze across the great beauties…

We Thought We Knew

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Both Mabel Dodge Luhan and I arrived in New Mexico with similar cavalier assumptions and an absence of prior research before buying land and building homes. There was a great deal neither of us considered or understood about the place. But the thing is, we thought we knew.

Guy Cross: What We Do For Love

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Guy started “THE Magazine” because he had a mother who took him around to all the galleries and museums in New York City when he was growing up and he came to appreciate art and artists. He wanted to create a place where they would be objectively reviewed…

Well, Joseph Campbell… ?

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I began this morning challenging Joseph Campbell and his immortal words, words I’ve held as true for so long: “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

Stick

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But something vital I’ve come to know is this: no matter how hard it is to hold on sometimes, we are not disposable. Our selves, our dogs, our relationships, are not to be shunted aside when they become too difficult.

On the Road in New Mexico: Valles Caldera National Preserve

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Human connection to this landscape runs incredibly deep. Artifacts found within the caldera have been carbon-dated to 11,000 years ago, proving its use dates back to prehistoric times. Oral histories record that the area drew the ancestors of the Jemez, Zia, Santa Clara, and San Ildefonso pueblos.

The Miracle of Kathleen Ramsay, Part 2

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I was there when she handed a rehabilitated Great Horned Owl back to the man who had saved it, ready to be set free into the forest where it was found. I was present for the release of three fat, healthy bears—overhearing a Game and Fish officer note with immense satisfaction that “Ramsay always releases fat bears.”

So You Think Artists Are Lazy?

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I didn’t paint for 26 years after college, where I was a painting and drawing major and a printmaking minor. Coming back to painting took a tremendous commitment and no small amount of effort.

Giving Birth to Art

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This is where the abstracts were born. They waited years to show themselves—until I came to New Mexico, where the mountain scooped me up and held me in her deep, cool, embrace.

The Dark Horse Series

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There was a small herd of horses pastured on the four acres in front of my house. They were rather skittish at first but, slowly, we got to know each other. Then, in the middle of a blizzard, a little one was born. I saw her with her mama just after the sun came up.

Art Discovered in Silence

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I spent untold hours walking this road, in silence so pure I heard ravens’ wings cutting through the air above me. It was here, in the depth of this old forest, high up on the mountainside, where I started making paintings unlike anything I’d ever done before.

A World of Blue

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I was living in a pale blue world. Sunlight cast shadows on the snow covered ground in just about every shade imaginable. Then there was the daylight sky with its muted cerulean expanses and white clouds, acequias frozen over with pastel ice. I started making paintings unlike anything I’d ever done.

What Robert Motherwell Said…

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The landscape introduced me to those who came before: the ancients who lived high on the mountain above the timberline; the Comanche crossing from the plains over the peaks; and the Spanish colonists who carved their village out of this forbidding soil.

Living a Life of Abstraction

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I create my paintings under the profound influence of the rich tradition of those who went before me. I understand, now, that these works were only made possible by the sacrifices of cultural revolution—by great artists who courageously broke new ground.

A Journey to Rociada

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Standing in the middle of that silent street, in the midst of all those abandoned buildings, it was very quiet but not mute. It was almost as if I was perceiving the silent footprints of a world now gone forever.

Sigh

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I feel as though I’ve let out a breath—a breath I didn’t know I was holding. When had it started? When I was one, sixteen, thirty, sixty-four? I honestly don’t know, but it was deep and old, ancient perhaps. Mammalian?

What Does It Mean to be an Artist?

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My life demands something of me: Not that I be fearless but that, if I am afraid, I face it. It asks me to stand in the self-doubt and the fear, to get comfortable there, to know I am human and this is part of it, to have compassion.

Trusting the Process of Life

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I wish for all of us the pursuit of our dreams and the blessing of parents who grant them; to BE the parents who grant them, and the friends who support them. May we all live within our greatest possibilities and trust the process of life.

Day Trip

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The trip was filled with ghosts and they or the land, or both, gripped my soul on this sunny New Mexico day when Kim and I journeyed back in time and experienced the conceived utopia of another era and a sense of the lives lived within it, in old houses and on ancient land.

Mark of the Ancients, Part 1: Bandelier

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I am, once again, living in a place that is surrounded by ancient sites. Some of them are ruins, inhabited only by the spirits of those who went before, some are national parks and some are still active pueblo villages. The living pueblos include Taos, Picuris, San Juan, Santa Clara, Nambe, Pojoaque, Tesuque and San […]

Mark of the Ancients, Part 2: Taos Pueblo

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Unlike Bandelier, which is inhabited only by the spirits that went before, Taos Pueblo is a living ancient village. This Pueblo is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the US, formally acknowledged as older than one thousand years. However, the people of the Pueblo say, “The Native legends and detailed oral history […]

How Do We Grow?

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What is it about the dark emotions that repel me? Why do I resist and deny them, even hide myself away when I’m in them? They are part of being human.

Dennis Hopper in Taos

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“In the late 1960s at the height of his career, Dennis Hopper left Hollywood for artistic bohemia in New Mexico. His daughter looks back on a man in search of free expression and a more contemplative way of life.” This from the NYT tmagazine blog.

Democracy

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My child’s heart still has faith in our country and its government. Yes, the Senate broke it again today. Again. But they did not break our Democracy.