Several years ago I drove to the little village of Arroyo Seco just north of Taos for a little escape from my busy life in Boulder Colorado. I was renting a “Writers Cottage” (think painter’s retreat) for a sunny few days, complete with a big black bull for a neighbor, safely behind a fence, and a short walk to town. There nearby were the “far blue mountains” described by beloved Western writer Louis L’Amour, ever-present in the West.
This was one of my many road trips to Northern New Mexico for a painter like me seeking inspiration. I live in Santa Fe NM now. My road trips now go the other direction, north to see family.
Much as I love Colorado, when driving south I always get a warm sense, watching the transforming change in the light, the skies, the trees and the land when entering Southern Colorado as I near the state line. The skies and clouds seem more vivid. When I drive the “back road” behind the Sangre De Cristo mountains I look for bighorn sheep along the road, ever since I saw a couple I thought were a Mr. and Mrs. Bighorn standing near the road, watching me drive along. Slowly. Highway 287 takes me through the beautiful San Luis Valley in Colorado, then New Mexico and Taos are not far.
The Taos valley has attracted painters since 1893 when artist and illustrator Joseph Henry Sharp first visited from the East, followed by Ernest Blumenshein and Bert Phillips in 1898. They wrote other artists in New York and Paris about the beauty and artistic promise of the Taos area and in 1915 a small art colony in Taos was born. Many more artists arrived, drifted south to Santa Fe and today it has been called the Art Capital of the West.
For landscape painters like myself, the skies seem to create and magnify the natural color. Seeing a brilliant sunset makes me run to capture it in a photo, since it’s so fleeting. The sight gives me an excitement time and again. Now and then I just have to paint what I’ve experienced.
Responding to the magnificent light in nature makes artists head for their paints and palettes to create color in their own special ways. The response can be a kind of emotional fervor when it comes to color. Marc Chagall said, “Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is
vibration like music; everything is vibration.” Painter Emil Nolde, speaking of this vibration said, “Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death.” Kandinsky called it vibrations in the soul.
Living with nature has helped me build my color palette as a means of vivid expression. There is a deep power in color to tell stories, evoke feelings of mystery, joy or peace in painting, and heighten the sense of drama. When the prickly, unlovely cholla cactus blooms once a year, it’s something to get happy about! Magenta pink is definitely a part of my palette.
Above, warm colors of orange and gold are balanced by dark neutral hues of very dark green, grayish purple and warm brown. Bits of blue in the photos become more an accent color than a major player.
When the feeling comes you just have to break the mold. In The Purple Clouds painting, near black tones ground the vivid colors above. This landscape is more real than you might think. Am I right my Western New Mexico and Arizona friends?
The above palette is predominantly earthy with a few sky colors to balance it like a cool blue, a warm blue and some violets. Rather than black I love to use a really dark purplish brown. The olive and sandy greens are a must for me. Painters from green countries and Eastern America might find this palette very different than their own locale and sensibility. But that is what is wonderful about art and color. We all can appreciate new combinations and inspirations to try new things.
Fall anywhere brings a joyous opportunity for painters in the West. Gold aspen and cottonwoods everywhere start it off. Red oak found in places like Carbondale and La Veta pass bring a welcome addition to the collected palette. Some aspen trees turn a reddish color too, which I love.
Even the full spectrum of color in a painter’s palette can be calming. Softer, quieter. A lot depends on the brushwork. Watching the evening sky in a brilliant place of dynamic southwest contrasts in the landscape suddenly softens with the waning light. There are so many possibilities as painters like me interpret the ever changing landscape of the West.
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Hue Bliss: Color & Art notes by Karen Gillis Taylor 