The Taos Society of Artists

Taos Mountain

"Mabel's Gate" 9x12 Oil
From the last painting retreat I held in Taos

Several weeks ago, we received a recall notice for our Subaru Outback.  It turned out we were one of 42 million cars being recalled for defective Takata airbags.  We'd been driving the car for five years, carefree, and this new knowledge that we might be showered at any moment by sharp metal fragments flying at high velocity was cause for concern.  We booked an appointment with a dealer in Santa Fe to have the airbag replaced.  But, we decided, why not make a fun trip out of it?  We hadn't been to Taos since the last painting retreat we hosted there, and it was only 90 minutes from Santa Fe.  So, Taos it was. 

I first heard of Taos back in the late 70s.  I was working as a sandwich cook in a college bar in Vermont at the time.  A friend of mine, another lost soul, said he was leaving Vermont for Taos.  "How do you spell that?" I asked, it being the first time I'd heard of it.  Since then, I've had a full and satisfying life, but a small part of me wishes that I, too, had packed up and gone to Taos.  Back then, Taos was a creative stew of hippies, artists and ski bums, and living was cheap.  Today, it's more gentrified, having been discovered by the likes of Julia Roberts and the late Dennis Hopper.  I'm not sure I could afford a house there now.

Ernest Blumenschein Studio

Taos is a small town—the population is about 5700—nestled in a flat area between the deep, blue-walled gorge of the Rio Grande and the juniper-dotted foothills of the Taos mountains.  The name Taos, in the language of the inhabitants of the nearby Indian pueblo, means "place of the red willows."  Spanish, Anglos and native Taoseños have shared the land for hundreds of years, ranching, farming and trading.  Old adobe haciendas, some in better repair than others, and smaller adobe homes still stand, occupied by the old families, in certain parts of town.  It can be a quiet, calm place for a creative person.  And for the plein air painter, well, the scenery is hard to beat.  I especially love it in the fall, when the cottonwoods turn yellow along the pastures below the mountains, which are themselves garbed in golden aspens.

"Buck" Denton Studio

While waiting to have our car worked on, we spent two days in Taos, one of which included Easter Sunday.   Unfortunately, the museums (the Millicent Rogers Museum and the Nicolai Fechin house, among others) were closed that day, and just a few galleries were open.  However, we were armed with a walking tour map, so we entertained ourselves by visiting the studios of members of the Taos Society of Artists.   I'd seen an exhibit on this group at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe last fall.   It reminded me that it had been an active, vibrant group, so we were excited to rediscover these mostly humble studios.  I'd seen some of them on previous visits, but one new to me was the studio of Victor Higgins, which is currently occupied by Parsons Gallery of the West.  I know Parsons—it's one of the best galleries in New Mexico—but didn't know its history.  I've included here a few photos of the studio exteriors.

E.I. Couse Studio

Closeup of Couse's Studio Door

The story of the Taos Society of Artists begins with Joseph Henry Sharp, who visited in 1893 and became enchanted by both the land and the culture.  Later, while studying in Paris with Ernest Blumenschein, he urged Blumenschein to visit it some day.  Finally, in 1898, Blumenschein and fellow painter Bert Phillips, spurred on by Sharp's tales of the American West, headed west, first going by rail to Denver.  Upon reaching Denver, they bought a wagon with a team of horses and drove down to New Mexico.  But their goal was not Taos but Santa Fe, where they'd heard that other artists were starting to settle.  Along the way, an elderly gentleman suggested they visit Taos, so remembering how Sharp had talked about the town, they decided to take a detour.  But twenty miles outside of Taos, the left rear wheel of their wagon broke, stranding them.  Blumenschein won the lottery to carry the wheel on ahead to Taos for repair, leaving Phillips behind on the roadside with the wagon.  On his return with the fixed wheel to fetch Phillips, he told Phillips he liked Taos so much that they should stay there rather than go on to Santa Fe.

Joseph Henry Sharp Studio
(actually attached to the Couse studio)

And so they did.  Phillips ended up making Taos his home, and Blumenschein returned every summer to paint, also finally settling there in 1912.  They encouraged other artists to join them, and in 1915, they founded the Taos Society of Artists, the primary goal of which was to sell their art through traveling exhibitions.  (There were no galleries in Taos in those days.)  From the original founders—Phillips, Blumenschein, Sharp, E.I. Couse, Oscar Berninghaus and W. Herbert "Buck" Denton—it grew to include Victor Higgins, E. Martin Hennings and Walter Ufer.  Other creative types, not part of the Society, also flocked to Taos, such as artist Nicolai Fechin, the socialite heiress Mabel Dodge and writer D.H. Lawrence.

Walter Ufer Studio - and a Haunted House!

Victor Higgins Studio
(Currently occupied by Parsons Gallery of the West)

Someone once said that working with artists is like herding cats, and that truth, along with infighting, caused the Society to disband in 1927.  However, its reputation had been established, and today paintings by its members are in museums throughout the country.

When you view the paintings of the Taos artists, you can feel the energy they drew from that new, strange place.  It's a pleasure to visit the galleries and museums and to suddenly come across one of their paintings.  For me, it's like seeing Taos for the first time.  (You can see more paintings by members of the Taos Society of Artists on the New Mexico Museum of Art site. )

By the way, I'll be hosting a painting retreat again in Taos in October 2020.  My painting retreats are small, just a handful of participants, and we all live together to really immerse ourselves in the week.  I give past students priority booking for these, so if you are interested but haven't taken a workshop with me yet, you'll want to do othat.  And do let me know if you would like to be notified when I have more information about this retreat.

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.

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.

Taos Mentoring Workshop with Albert Handell October 2019

Taos, New Mexico - Painter's Paradise

I am pleased to be joining my mentor and good friend, Albert Handell, at his Taos Mentoring Workshop, October 6-12, 2019.   I've worked with Albert many times in the past, both as student and assistant, and I'm looking forward to working with him again.

If you haven't worked with him before, let me share with you a little about his mentoring workshops.  In these, he covers topics that aren't addressed in the all-level workshops, and he also covers the business of art.  What's more, he offers extensive critiques of participants' work.  I highly recommend this workshop to any painter who is serious about both craft and career.  This master painter, who recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2019 Plein Air Convention, has a great deal to offer the student.

Here is a description from his website on the workshop:

Join Albert Handell in this exciting 6-day indoor/outdoor mentoring/painting workshop. In the demonstration series you will see and learn what to select and emphasize and what to play down or even take out of your paintings in order to make a strong design statement, and work sensibly towards finish. It will be an opportunity to see how a Master Artist works in a studio setting and on location.

This is the 14th annual Taos Paint-A-Long mentoring program, Albert has painted there often and knows Taos and its area intimately.

The area has wonderful subject matter to paint, varying from the picturesque adobes; the farm/ranch museum at the Hacienda De Los Martinez; the thrilling road leading to the John Dunn Bridge at the base of the Rio Grande; beautiful, easy-to-get-to mountain streams; and the fantastic Rio Grande Gorge -- to list just some of the extensive subject matter available.

This will be an intense experience for everyone!  For full details on the Taos workshop, please visit  www.AlbertHandell.com.

I've personally visited and painted Taos, New Mexico, several times, and it's always a treat, no matter the season.  (You can read about my previous adventures in Taos at this link.)  This workshop, in early October, should give us some good color.  If you've not been there before, I've included a few photos I've taken over the years. I hope to see you there!

The Rio Grande

Entry Gate to Mabel Dodge Luhan House

Rio Grande Gorge

Rio Grande near Pilar

Rio Grande Gorge

Taos Mountain

Mabel Dodge Luhan House

La Morada de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe (Taos Morada)

San Francisco de Asis Mission Church

Taos Plein Air Painting Retreat – Day 4

Painting at Rio Grande Gorge

We had more spring New Mexico weather Thursday.  The radar showed rain nearby and possibly overhead.  A quick glance at the sky, though, showed the rain wasn't reaching the ground.  Virga, as it is called, can be quite beautiful with its long, feathery drifts of rain, so after breakfast and our daily critique session we headed out for the Rio Grande Gorge.

Demonstrating the use of manganese violet

Ordinarily, the Gorge is best painted in sunlight with good shadows.  But I liked the clouds and the sense of distance the moist air created.  Best of all, though, I liked the little "Ice Cream Bus" parked  on the road by the bridge that crosses the Gorge.  (The bus also advertised "Strong Hot Coffee," and in the 46 degree chill, a couple of our group patronized the bus for exactly that.)

Ice Cream Bus  - If you're not on the bus, you're off the bus

One of the problems with the scene was the preponderance of hueless greys.  As I've mentioned before in my blog, I am red-green colorblind, and some of the more subtle greys tend to look, well, like grey.  If I see a pure, neutral grey in nature, I always to push it toward one color family or the other.  Which color I push it toward has to do what I perceive as the dominant color in the scene.  Today, I convinced myself I was seeing a lot of violet.

I picked up a tube of Gamblin's manganese violet this week, and I have been determined to use it.  (Perhaps this is what convinced me that I was seeing violet.)  It turned out to be the perfect "mother color" to use everywhere in the painting.  The middle-distance cliffs are mostly manganese violet with white and a little Torrit Grey.  The farther ones have some ultramarine blue added.  The closest ones have some permanent alizarin crimson.  Elsewhere, the greens, yellows and oranges have all been moderated with manganese violet.  Even the "school bus" yellow of the Ice Cream Bus has manganese violet in it.

Ice Cream Bus, Rio Grande Gorge 9x12 oil - SOLD

One of the retreat participants asked if I was going to add the letters on the bus.  "Ice Cream Bus" was painted in black along the top, but the letters were too small for a 9x12 format.  I opted to leave them out, hoping that the little seemingly-blank sign propped up in front would indicate that it was some sort of vendor's bus.  Also, the title helps.

Fechin House interior

San Fransisco de Asis church in Rancho de Taos.  This is the back of it.
Why does everyone photo and paint it from the rear?

After lunch, the overcast skies continued, but it seemed a little sun was coming out.  Some went back into town to tour the museums.  The Fechin House and Taos Art Museum are not to be missed.  Not only can you see some prime examples of Fechin's portrait work, but you can also see his handiwork in the house.  He hand-carved every piece of exposed wood, incising intricate scrollwork and other details.  We also visited the famous church at Rancho de Taos – it was painted by Georgia O'Keeffe, photographed by Ansel Adams and probably painted and photographed by a few hundred thousand other people over the years.

Painting on the back porch

Taos Mountain, Sunspots 9x12 oil

In the afternoon, I tried my new palette out on Taos Mountain.  The light was fleeting – shifting sunspots as thunderstorms built over the landscape – but as the mountain and the field of sage in front of it were mostly in shadow, my magenta violet was really appropriate.  (I'm not sure if the two photos of my paintings show the true colors; I'll take better ones once I'm at my summer studio.)

Pizza for dinner at Taos Pizza Outback!

Plein Air Painting Retreat Report: Taos, New Mexico

Down by the River, 9x12 pastel

From my years living in Vermont, I know that it is hard to pin down precisely the week of peak fall foliage.  Sometimes the peak comes a little early—and sometimes a little late.  It's the same in northern New Mexico.  For our plein air painting retreat in Taos this year, the colors were just beginning.  Down by the Rio Grande, the sumacs were showing their first flush of red; in town, the cottonwoods were polishing up the first few gold coins.  As a painter, I find this subtle color more enticing than the full-out carnival.

This year, we had four participants—a small group by design.  Small groups make for easier parking and less impact on the environment.  Plus, if you're visiting a small village to paint, it's less bothersome for the locals.  And, as luck would have it, one of the museums we visited only permitted groups of 6 or fewer, and so we were all able to take the tour together.  Participants came from Arizona, Colorado and New York, all of them past students.  (I give past students priority for the retreats.).

Although painting day in and day out may sound attractive to hard-core outdoor painters, I like to enrich the retreat experience by arranging other (always optional) activities.  In addition to a bounty of beautiful painting spots, Taos also offers several museums, galleries and celebrities.  On Sunday, the day of our orientation meeting, we visited artist Walt Gonske, who was having an open studio weekend.  I first met Walt many years ago.  I was pleased to see that he, fast closing in on 80, still paints from his famous “paint mobile,” which is now in its fourth and, Walt says, perfected version.

Later in the week, we had an opportunity to visit painter Kevin Macpherson.  Although he was very busy—he'd just wrapped up 10 days of shooting a video in his studio and was now packing for a workshop in Maryland—Kevin took the time out to show us his studio and to talk about his travels.  He also invited us to paint his pond, made famous among plein air painters by his book, Reflections on a Pond: A Visual Journal.  Unfortunately, we'd had threatening weather all day, and just as we started painting, the rain began.  (We did enjoy the protection of a gazebo.)  Toward the end of our time, though, the sun burst out, lighting up the aspens along the water's edge with bright yellow.

We also visited the Plein Air Painters of New Mexico annual exhibit at the Wilder-Nightingale Gallery; the Taos Art Museum at the Nicolai Fechin house; the historic Hacienda de la Martinez; the Mabel Dodge Luhan house; and my favorite, the newly-opened Couse-Sharp Historic Site.  E. Irving Couse and Joseph Sharp, both members of the original Taos Society of Painters, shared the property but had separate studios.  A two-hour tour gave us an in-depth look at the lives of these two painters. (I personally preferred the Couse studio, as it remains virtually untouched since his death; the Sharp studio had been, alas, cleaned up by museum curators and looked more like a show studio than a working studio.)  All of these activities put an educational spin on a week that otherwise was filled with painting in inspiring locations.

If you're interested in next year's plein air painting retreat in Taos, the dates are October 2-7, 2022.  Let me know if you'd like to join us.  You can find out more about my retreats—how they're different from a workshop, for example—at my website:  https://www.mchesleyjohnson.com/workshops-2/ 

Here are some paintings and photos from the week.  All of the sketches are available for sale; contact me if interested.

Rainy Day at Mabel's, 9x12 Oil

River Study, 6x8 Oil

Wonky Adobe in Arroyo Seco, 9x12 Pastel

View of John Dunn Bridge, 5x8 Gouache

Taos Mountain, 5x8 Gouache

Walt Gonske's Gate

Painting by the River

More by the River

Me, Sketching in Gouache

Morning Critiques

Kevin Macpherson's Studio (and Kevin)

Tour of the Couse-Sharp Historic Site

E. Irving Couse's Paintbox

Painting at the Couse-Sharp Site

Gate at Mabel Dodge Luhan House

Rain Coming In!