Image of the Day – Vintage Photo, May 4, 2012

Road trip through New Mexico, 1923. Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection.

© My-West.com Photography Collection. All rights reserved.

Image of the Day, March 21, 2012

While living in Chicago, Walter Ufer’s patron, Chicago mayor Carter Harrison, sent Ufer to Taos to paint the land and the indigenous people, but cautioned him not to romanticize them, but to paint them as they lived and worked in the landscape. To heighten the realism he was searching for, Ufer often painted at mid-day when the sun bleached the greasewood and sage and the only color to be found was in the bright clothing of the Pueblo Indians, and the arroyos carved by flash floods.

Walter Ufer, Untitled, oil on canvas, c. 1925. Private Collection. Photo Credit: My-West.com.©More on Walter Ufer:

Painting of the Day, November 9, 2011

Painting of the Day, January 22, 2012

By Donna Poulton

Alyce Frank, El Salto, 2010, oil on canvas, 29 x 22 in. Credit: Fenix Gallery Alyce Frank didn't begin painting … until she and her family moved to an adobe morado built by the Penitentes in Arroyo Hondo, a small village outside of Taos, New Mexico. Transfixed by the beauty of the countryside near her home and inspired by the achievements of the German Expressionists and the Fauves, Frank, then 43, began painting New Mexican landscapes in the bold colors and expressionist style which have become her trademark. "Within 20 miles from my house, I can paint high mountain scenery, the snow line, the tree line where it is bare; I can paint the gorge of the Rio Grande, high desert and rock canyons. There are also orchards and farmland because of the irrigated valleys that the Spanish have developed. And then," she adds, "we have this beautiful light." --C.M., University of Chicago Magazine/October 1993

Alyce Frank, Grande Canyon Soft Colors, oil on linen, 30 x 30 in. Credit: Fenix Gallery

Painting of the Day, January 12, 2012

By Donna Poulton

"In the past, I would have an idea for a painting and hold to that idea through to the finish.  I could pretty much see the end result before I started.  There were no surprises.  But now my understanding of the process is that the idea is just the first impulse.  From that first impulse forward, improvisation takes over.  The end result is not about that first idea, but is instead a record of all those impulses along the way.  Each stroke of paint carries emotion and power.  I work in a loose, painterly style in part because I want the viewer to see the process and not hide it behind 'finish;' for the viewer to maybe even feel how a particular piece of paint was put down.”  -- Walt Gonske

Walt Gonske, Arroyo Seco Adobes, oil on canvas, 30 x 32 in. Credit: © Courtesy of the artist and Nedra Matteucci

Image of the Day: January 8, 2012

By Donna Poulton

"Art...is a kind of tyrant; it pushes you around. It came to me dressed in wanderlust." -- Gustave Baumann

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), Aspen Thicket, woodcut.  Credit: Modernbungalow.comTrained at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Munich, Baumann came west in 1915 to attend the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco where he won a gold medal for his woodcut.  After traveling through the southwest, Baumann found Santa Fe and ideal place to live and settled there in 1917. He remained there for the next 50 years designing prints of the colorful and mystical landscape. 

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), Santuarion—Chimayo, 1924, woodcut. Credit: antiquesandthearts.comHis woodblock prints are signed with the familiar image of a hand opened over the heart.

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), The Processional, 1930, color woodcut with aluminum leaf, 13 x 13 in. Credit: annexgalleries