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.
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Beatrice Mandelman, My Favorite Taos Modernist
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
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
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
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
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.
The Old Adobe Church, the Wolf and Survival
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
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
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
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
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… ?
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
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
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.
On the Road in New Mexico: When Los Alamos was a Ranch School
Founded in 1917 on the isolated Pajarito Plateau, the Los Alamos Ranch School was designed as an “outdoor school” to combine a rigorous college preparatory curriculum with intense physical activity in the wilderness.
Lorey Sebastian: Tales of the Film Industry, Part 1
It’s a very difficult job: long hours, and you have to meet the demands of a lot of people—studios, producers, directors, and actors. You have to be present and yet remain invisible. They don’t want to know you’re there taking photographs.
Lorey Sebastian: Tales of the Film Industry, Part 2
Unbeknownst to me, the film business was just starting to boom in Santa Fe and Albuquerque at that time. I popped up out of nowhere with a massive list of film credits and became a star again.
The Miracle That Is Kathleen Ramsay, Part 1
Ramsay’s wild patients represent the untamed world we’re running out of space for. So she takes them deeper into the mountains and forests, back to where she hopes the sweep of time may forget them.
The Miracle of Kathleen Ramsay, Part 2
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.”
Is There More to Tell? An Artist’s Journey from Realism to Abstraction
A reader presented an idea this morning. She asked if I would consider incorporating some of my paintings into the blog and talk about my process. I’ve touched on it in some earlier posts, but her question stirred something else inside me. I took this with me out on our morning’s walk just ahead of a storm. Was there more to tell?
Why Aren’t My Paintings Pretty For God’s Sake?
There is a real story to tell–about where I was as an artist BEFORE I came to Truchas and AFTER Truchas. It is a story of fences and horses and grasses and how they changed me.
So You Think Artists Are Lazy?
As most of you know, I didn’t paint for 26 years after college, where I was a painting and drawing major and a printmaking minor. What you may not know is that coming back to painting took a tremendous commitment and no small amount of effort.
Stripped Down and Broken Open: Giving Birth to Art
… this is where I caught my first true glimpse of me. THIS is where the abstracts were born. But I wouldn’t fully understand it until this very moment as I write it out to you.
Of Transitions and the Place Between
A birthing that necessitated pain, as all birth does, was taking place and I was in it. I was coming into ME. And my paintings reflected all of it–the growth, the pain and the confusion.
An Uncomfortable But Compelling Push-Pull
… it was with some incredible hubris, if not utter disrespect, that I’d made these plans. I knew nothing about Truchas–its rich and complicated history, its heritage, its people, its simple AGE (the village was founded in 1754).
The Art of Becoming
Apparent or not, these pieces were all born of the land. They illustrate a period of intense soul searching and growth that could only take place in the embrace of this place I had come to trust.
New Mexico Isn’t for Sissies
… when a local artist accused me of painting wallpaper, I had my first glimpse of raising the bar. Welcome to New Mexico kid! The home of the big boys and truly exceptional art.
A World of Blue
I was living in a pale blue world. Snow covered the ground and the shadows cast on its surface offered up just about every shade imaginable—the sunlit sky of day with its blue and white clouds… pale blue everywhere.
The Dark Horse Series
There was also 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 what could only be called a blizzard, a little one was born. I saw her with her mama just after the sun came up. This wasn’t good.
What Robert Motherwell Said…
I set out walking. There is no other way of putting it. I walked and walked, taking in this new place I called home. It was a need, a sort of walking meditation, that soothed something deep inside me.
Living a Life of Abstraction
So I make my paintings, influenced by the rich tradition of those who went before me, works made possible by the sacrifices required of revolution, by great artists breaking new ground. I think those artists live on, not only in their own works they left behind, but in the works of those of us who call ourselves abstractionists… the ground they broke is still bearing fruit.
A Journey to Rociada
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
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?
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
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
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.
History of Place: The Mountains of Northern NM
This trio of cultures, Indian, Spanish, Anglo, is what’s left in these small Spanish land grant villages of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In fact the land grant families are still here, many generations later.
Mark of the Ancients, Part 1: Bandelier
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
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?
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
“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.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s White Place
I did not set out seeking Georgia as so many seem to do. I just went on a hike with friends. It didn’t occur to me until days later that we were in Georgia O’Keeffe’s White Place.
Adventures in the Art of Bread Making
Since I first started to learn about cooking, bread has held a great fascination for me. I wanted to be able to duplicate the wonderful French baguette and Italian round loaves that I had known in Europe.
Democracy
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.