Return to Taos: Upcoming Painting Retreat

The Rio Grande Gorge & the Sangre de Cristos

Taos, New Mexico - Painting Retreat

September 26-October 1, 2021

If you've not been to Taos before, you're in for a treat.  Taos sits between the 800-foot-deep Rio Grande Gorge and the aspen-clad peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  Our subject matter will include the Rio Grande, which should be starting to show some autumn color, as well as the mountain streams and aspens near Taos Ski Valley.  We'll also paint the rustic adobe structures in historic Arroyo Seco and, of course, the enchanting village of Taos itself.  I've painted in this area many times and will be happy to share with you my knowledge.

But Taos isn't all about the landscape.  It's also home to the Taos Society of Artists, and you can visit some of their studios, which are now museums.  The Taos Art Museum at the Nicholai Fechin House is a great introduction to these artists, as are the E.I. Couse and Blumenschein studios and the Mabel Dodge Luhan House.  Taos is also home to many excellent restaurants including Doc Martin's, Orlando's Mexican Cafe and Michael's, as well as to many galleries.

This exclusive painting retreat will be limited to only FIVE painters.  Participants must have outdoor painting experience and be comfortable painting without assistance.  Cost for the retreat is $300, not including lodging or meals.  (You can find many excellent and reasonably-priced options for lodging at AirBnB and elsewhere.)  A $150 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your space.  Once I receive your deposit, I'll send a confirmation letter with important details.  Contact me to reserve your space.

Although this is not a formal workshop, I will be giving critiques daily for work we do during the week.  After that, I'll guide you to one of many stunning locations for our morning painting session where we will paint as a group.  You are welcome to watch as I paint and treat it as a demo, and I will gladly narrate as I work.  After lunch, we can continue to paint as a group at a new location, or if you'd like to paint on your own, I will give you suggestions.  We may also choose to visit one of the Taos museums or galleries.

I invite you to join me in this special painting retreat!  Here are some photos to whet your appetite.

Plein Air Painters of New Mexico Paintout

"Path to the Lake"
9x12 Oil - Available

Here's a group activity well-suited to these times—a paintout.  There's no problem with close quarters, and fresh air is in abundance.  And for those of us who have been painting alone in our back yards, it's an opportunity to reconnect with our social selves.

Last weekend, I hosted a paintout at a local lake for Plein Air Painters of New Mexico.  Nine of us gathered—so to speak—to spend the day under the intense sunshine of early fall.  Despite a breeze that picked up in the afternoon, we couldn't have asked for a better day.  The chamisa bloomed with a bounty of bright gold, and yellow edged the boughs of the cottonwoods.  The lake waters glowed with a dull green, dabbed with blue here and there by the reflected sky.  I've been longing to paint the chamisa ever since it started blooming, so that was my focus; others painted the lake view.

In New Mexico, the state currently requires masks to be worn when in public, and gatherings are limited to ten.  We followed the rules—a mask does not hinder painting—and even during a lunch break under a bit of shade, we kept our distance.  Now that cooler weather has arrived, I'm hoping to host more of these.

You're right--I'm not wearing a mask in this photo.
That's because everyone else was a few hundred feet away!

Ghost Ranch Revisted—and an Upcoming Retreat

Ghost Ranch Morning
9x12 Oil - Available

Ghost Ranch and Abiqiui, New Mexico—Georgia O'Keeffe's old haunts.  These are my old haunts, too, as I've visited and painted in the area many times over the last 20 years.  This time, I spent three days there, painting in gouache and oil, and in reading Lesley Poling-Kempes' history of the property, Ghost Ranch.  

The cottage O'Keeffe stayed in when
first at Ghost Ranch. I doubt the handicap
assist rails were there in her day.

Base camp was our 1999 PleasureWay van, parked in a side canyon formed by a bent arm of red and grey hills.  We were nestled right in the crook of the arm.  From our post, we could see the blue anvil-head of the Pedernal.  O'Keeffe once said, “It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”  The mountain overlooks the entirety of the historic Piedra Lumbre Land Grant, a region of colorful hills, deep arroyos, and bright cliffs—“Piedra Lumbre” means “shining rock.”  Ghost Ranch occupies 21,000 acres of this stunning and very paintable landscape.

Once a dude ranch, and before that, the legendary home of the Archuleta brothers, who were notorious cattle rustlers, it now belongs to the Presbyterian Church.  The campus now offers many workshops and retreats, not just in spiritual matters, but also in the arts.  But for painters, Ghost Ranch is best known for its connection to O'Keeffe.  She started spending summers there as a guest in the 1930s.  After her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, died, she bought a piece of the ranch and moved there permanently.  Between her Ghost Ranch home and another house she owned in nearby Abiquiu, she spent the rest of her life—over forty years—painting the hills of the Piedra Lumbre.

The Ranch, with Chimney Rock illuminated
by the morning sun.

While reading Poling-Kempes' history, the characters that lived in this place were ever-present for me as I painted.  I couldn't help but think of them crossing the landscape on foot or on horseback through the sagebrush, or of guests arriving via the Ranch's Lincoln touring car, a behemoth that could hold seven passengers plus luggage and still somehow lumber over the one-lane dirt road, down through arroyos and over rock-strewn hills, that wound for forty miles from the train depot in Española.  And, of course, I imagined Georgia O'Keeffe, painting away at the foot of some particularly colorful hill that was cut by the rare rains into graceful curves.

Our trip wasn't all painting.  We hiked, too.

As some of you know, we had to cancel our Taos, New Mexico, painting retreat for this fall.  But we are planning for next year—and as a bonus, we are going to schedule in some time for painting at Ghost Ranch.   We'll spend a week in Taos, and then follow that with time at Ghost Ranch.  The Taos retreat will start Sunday evening, September 26, 2021, and will run through Friday, October 1.  Ghost Ranch, which won't officially be part of the retreat, will be that weekend.  Let me know if you're interested, and I'll send you details as we get them.  I hope you'll join us!

Here are some of the 5x8 gouache sketches from the trip:

View from the campground

This was the preliminary sketch I did for
"Ghost Ranch Morning".  I sketched this
the day before I did the oil version.

Looking Down

"By the Lake"
20x16 Oil - Available

I enjoy landscape paintings with unusual perspectives.  An unexpected viewpoint always gives me a little frisson of pleasure.

Recently, Trina and I took a hike to a favorite overlook.  I snapped several photos, hoping to make good on a promise I'd made to myself some time ago that I would paint that particular view.   I'd also promised myself—again, some time ago—that someday I would lug my plein air gear up there.  This hasn't happened yet.  Fortunately, though, I have a number of good color studies of the cliffs done from below, and I knew they would be helpful in getting the color my camera can't see.

With these references, I set up my studio easel and got to work.  For me, this became a standard “design it, paint it” piece with no experimentation.  I didn't try any exotic colors or mysterious mediums.  I just laid out my standard, modified split-primary palette and went at it.   Here are some progress photos for you to enjoy.

Blocking in general color...

...figuring out patterns of vegetation...

...completing shadow areas...

...adjusting shadowed side of cliff and
adding surface treatment to lake.

And again, the finished work.
"By the Lake"
20x16 Oil - Available

Canyon Abstract No. 2, 16x20 Oil

Canyon Abstract No.2
16x20 Oil - Available Here

This past week, I went through my “Pandemic Sketchbook,” looking for another canyon sketch to turn into a larger painting.  One of my favorites is this 5x8 gouache sketch:

I like it because of the unsettling, vertiginous feeling I get when I look at the boulder on the left.  It seems almost suspended in mid-slide,  as if it would take only a small touch to get it going again.  I thought that, if I made an even larger image, I could intensify that feeling.

I first toned the 16x20 canvas with a thin wash of acrylic yellow ochre.  Then, as with the last canyon painting, I used Van Dyke brown to lay in the dark notes, followed by burnt sienna in some of the shadows to indicate where warm light would be bouncing into them.  I had a lot of fun playing with greens, blues and reds in the shadows.

It was all smooth sailing—until I reached the right half of the canvas.  I wanted this to be a large, mostly empty area to make the boulder seem even more precarious.  In the gouache sketch, I had a couple of thin trees in that area, anchored by a shadowed ledge, but I decided they weren't necessary as they detracted from my idea.  But what to put there?  The area needed something, some dark shape, to balance the visual weight of the boulder.

I repainted this area twice, each time missing the mark.  My first attempt, a large dark shape, felt too heavy; my second, a smaller shape, still seemed too much.  Finally, I hit upon the solution.  A thin crack pulled the eye just enough to balance the boulder.

Here are the steps in the process, followed by some details shots.

That dark shape on the right was going to give me trouble!

I replaced the big dark shape on the right with
another, smaller one down toward the bottom.

I finally got rid of that annoying dark square
and replaced it with a simple, thin crack.
Finished:  Canyon Abstract No. 2 16x20 Oil

Some detail shots:

Canyon Abstract 20x24 Oil

Canyon Abstract
20x24 Oil
Available - Contact Me

As you may recall, I spent several weeks this late spring hiking into the canyon behind my studio, studying the canyon walls with my gouache kit.  Some of the sketches struck me as worthy of expanding into larger paintings.  One in particular caught my fancy, a closeup of the canyon wall, and I thought it had an enchanting abstract quality.

So, I took this 5x8 gouache sketch and based an 18x24 oil painting on it.  The larger version is very similar to the small sketch with respect to shapes, but I added or amplified some of the color, and also the texture.   I also removed the juniper bush in the bottom right, as I felt that made this "abstraction" more representational that I wanted.

Also, one thing I like to do when I base studio paintings on my sketches is to change the medium; this makes for a more interesting process and forces different color choices.   Also, for these studio pieces, I don't use any photo references--just the gouache sketch.  The sketch really contains plenty of information for a larger painting.

Here's the original 5x8 sketch:

Here are some of the steps in creating the larger piece:

Here is the final painting again. Please let me know if you are interested in purchasing it.  

Canyon Abstract 18x24 Oil

Also, some detail shots of the painting:

Awakening in Taos: The Mabel Dodge Luhan Story

I can't recall ever having blogged about a movie before, but after seeing Awakening in Taos: The Mabel Dodge Luhan Story last night, I wanted to share it.

I've painted in Taos, New Mexico, many times, and it's one of my favorite locations.  Why?  It's not just the scenery—beautifully-sculpted adobe houses, often nestled among golden-leaved cottonwoods; broad-shouldered Taos Mountain watching over the village; and the deep, black gorge of the Rio Grande—but also its history.  Artists discovered the beauty of Taos in the very earliest years of the 20th century.  Instrumental in bringing artists to Taos was the socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan.  She invited many painters, photographers, writers and sculptors to her home, including Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Willa Cather, Ansel Adams and Marsden Harley.

Over the years, I've led many students and retreat participants to Taos.  We've even painted on the grounds of “Los Gallos,” Mabel's estate, and have toured the interior.  I'm looking forward to our next retreat this October.  (The retreat is filled, but I will be happy to put you on the wait list.)  I like Taos so much that I am making this fall painting retreat an annual event.

The movie tells the story of how Mabel got to Taos and what she found there.  What's more, the movie is beautifully filmed, and shows the Taos landscape at its finest.  I suggest you rent or buy the movie here:  https://awakeningintaos.com/ .  And for more on Mabel, visit this site:  https://www.mabeldodgeluhan.com/

Detail of "Los Gallos"
You'll note the chicken on the right.

"Los Gallos" in early spring.

Mabel's gravesite.

A little sketch I did while at "Los Gallos".
"Mabel's Gate" 9x12 Oil.