Alvaro Cardona-Hine was a Renaissance man—a gifted painter, writer, and composer—though I knew him primarily as a painter. He didn’t paint to become celebrated or to hang in major museums; he once told me he worried that kind of ambition might harm the art itself.
“I just want to create,” Alvaro said. “My intention has always been to produce what is in me to produce, and if it gets somewhere that’s fine; if not, that’s destiny. But I don’t pursue the art world too much… what I’m after is always a vision that has inner meaning for me. This does not always please the public.”
Seeking a quiet, artful existence rather than chasing the mainstream art scene, Alvaro’s path shifted in the late 1960s when he met Barbara McCauley, a painter and poet who had signed up for his advanced poetry class in Los Angeles. They married in 1970, and in 1986, once their children were grown, relocated to Truchas, New Mexico. Two years later, they opened the Cardona-Hine Gallery. For over thirty years, they welcomed guests directly into their home, embedding themselves into New Mexico’s deeply rooted tradition of independent art spaces. And together, they made and sold a lot of art.
Visitors loved sitting down with them over tea and cakes or glasses of wine, and they genuinely thrived on sharing their work in this intimate way. I used to marvel at their ability to instantly comfort absolute strangers. They were the very epitome of New Mexico’s home-gallery culture.
As trailblazers alongside Bill Franke—who opened his Hand Artes Gallery a year earlier in 1987—Alvaro and Barbara cleared a path for others. In large part because of their private leap of faith, a dynamic, thriving artists’ colony was born in Truchas that continues to this day.
I arrived in 2005, a working artist looking for a place to settle, hunting for the kind of community Truchas offered. After meeting Barbara and Alvaro, and experiencing Hand Artes Gallery, I took my own leap into the unknown and bought land. It ultimately took three years to complete my home, as routing water and power to the site proved far more complex than I had anticipated. Yet, I returned to Truchas many times over those three years for extended periods, building a deep bond with the land—and with the other artists, including Barbara and Alvaro.
During one of those visits, Alvaro was excited to show me a new work he’d just completed. The entire background was pink. We stood quietly for some time as I took in this brand-new masterwork. He began talking about the background but struggled to name its base color, circling around the memory: “You know that wonderful red, what’s it called? It also comes in a rich brown… When you add white, it creates the most beautiful range of pinks and roses.”
I knew exactly what he was searching for because I’d only recently discovered the pigment myself. Like Alvaro, though, the name escaped me. Then, at the exact same moment, the fog cleared.
“Van Dyke Red,” we blurted together, laughing because we were both so darned pleased with ourselves.
Alvaro’s discovery inspired me. I had never thought of mixing Van Dyke Red with white; it is a very sheer pigment that I’d used primarily as a wash. But when I returned to Utah, I started playing with it, eventually developing a range of colors I called “Alvaro pinks.” They found their way into a very playful abstract piece I titled The Cat’s Pajamas. Though it sold long ago in Utah, it still holds a special place in my heart.
Alvaro later gifted me a small painting called Listening for Worms. It features a black bird set against a whimsical pink backdrop. I believe he, like me, always treasured our “pink” conversation, and gave me the painting as a beautiful, living memorial of that afternoon.
Alvaro was a profound thinker, as evidenced across all his art forms, but he was also a gentle, tender-hearted man. Hidden from the public was a sprinkle of fairy dust tucked deep inside him—a whimsical streak he reserved for those closest to him.
While I cannot claim to have been a member of his innermost circle, I was fortunate enough to witness that magic on occasion. I vividly remember one rainy afternoon at the house when Marty, a decades-long friend of Barbara and Alvaro’s from California, was visiting. He was a bright, funny man, and fairly tall. At one point, he stepped out from the kitchen into the living room where Alvaro was standing. Moving up behind him, Marty wrapped his arms around the artist, bent down to kiss the top of Alvaro’s bald head, and said affectionately, “Al baby.”
In that instant, this icon of the High Road’s art history lit up. That unmistakable twinkle gleamed in his eyes, showing his delight in being celebrated not as a master artist, but simply as a cherished friend known to this man as “Al baby.”
Another time, I was at their home having tea on the portal. Their two beloved English bulldogs and Barbara’s equally loved rescue mutt were lounging at our feet, receiving occasional bits of biscuit and affectionate praise. Out of the blue, Alvaro looked out at the scenery and said, “You know, it’s the land, the sunlight, and the weather that are continual inspirations. But the quiet is what has led to more concentrated work.”
Then, as though it were part of the very same thought, he frowned slightly. “However, there is one thing I cannot abide about living in Truchas: I will never enjoy a good, steaming hot cup of tea in my own home. At this altitude it’s lukewarm the minute it hits the cup.”
And that was that.
It is tragic when we hold onto old hurts, attaching them to people and events that have absolutely nothing to do with them. That is my one serious regret when it comes to my friendship with Alvaro. Later in our relationship, he gave me a copy of his newly published childhood memoir, A History of Light. I opened it eagerly, but as I read, his words inadvertently triggered something dark and long-buried from my own childhood.
Alvaro asked me several times over the following months what I thought of the book. Each time, I made excuses. I never gave him an answer. Had I been braver, I could have sat down with him and explained the powerful, painful impact his childhood memories had brought up in me. He would have understood. Instead, I pulled away.
I lost precious time with a friend who mattered deeply, and now he is gone. I will never get to talk with him about that book, or anything else. Yet, as I sit here writing about him, a strange clarity is washing over me. My good friend, wherever he may be, is still guiding me with his gentle mind. He is helping me heal the very thing that drove us apart.
That enduring guidance was already at work during one of my final art shows in Truchas, just before the silence fully set in.
As Alvaro was leaving the exhibition, he took my hand and pulled me into a quiet corner. Gazing at me with those intense, deep brown eyes, he asked, “How do you do it?”
I was stunned into silence. This master painter was marveling at the difference between his vision and mine. This unspeakably talented man had found mystery in another artist’s work, experiencing profound joy in a completely different expression. Every artist experiences doubt—soul-shattering doubt. In that moment, Alvaro lifted mine.
But at eighty-four, Alvaro knew there was no time to waste. And there wasn’t. Parkinson’s disease struck him suddenly and hard. He eventually confided in me that he was just so very tired. Not long after, we lost him. In the days before he was gone, I visited him at his bedside. We held hands, quietly thanking one another for the shared wonder of art.
I return to words Alvaro imparted to me during an interview for a blog post I was writing at the time:
“Somewhat unconsciously and through differing points of view, artists have always striven to reach the sublime. By sublime we mean works like a large painting by Rothko, a sonata by Charles Ives, Whitman’s poem ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,’ an apple by Cézanne, cave paintings in France… The fundamental tone reached by masterpieces is the recognition of great sorrows and great joys, their acceptance, if possible, their distillation.”
Alvaro Cardona-Hine gave us the sublime over and over again. And in doing so, he helped birth the vibrant artists’ colony that still lives on the high ridges of Truchas today.
Love to you all,
Jeane
Leave a Reply