On maps, the Rio Grande runs 1,900 miles, from its source in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico, depending on how it changes its course, water usage and climate change. Sometimes it never makes it to the gulf.
It runs from the mountains, through a gorge that continues to expand from the movement of tectonic plates, through bosques and desert, bringing life to the region.
Brad Teare, Cottonwood Canyon, oil, 30 x 30"
Manitou Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is celebrating the river with the exhibition, A River Runs Through It, May 14 through June 5, in their Canyon Road gallery. Featuring work by Michael Baum, Don Brackett, Ulrich Gleiter, Martha Goetz, Tom Perkinson, Brad Teare and Curtis Wade, the exhibition explores the river “as a source of life, of food, of water, and of transportation.”
Martha Goetz, Solitude, oil on panel, 20 x 16"
Goetz sculpts with paint, “exploring subjects with more vivid color and expressive surfaces” than her finely wrought figurative art. When she began sculpting animals she used any material she could find including bars of soap. Now, working with the expressive qualities of paint, she composes thickly impastoed images “inspired by the uniqueness of the individual and the beauty that surrounds us.” The trees, rocks and figure in Solitude coalesce from the strokes of her palette knife into a scene that can be experienced in many places along the course of the river.
Michael Baum, Life Blood, oil on linen, 20 x 40"
Teare subtitles his website “The Poetry of Thick Paint.” He encountered paintings by Van Gogh at the Metropolitan Museum and “marveled at the visceral power of the thick applications of beautiful color.” For many years he carved woodcuts and produced illustrations for the New York Times and Random House. His preliminary underpainting is in black and white, appearing at first to be a woodcut itself. He then paints a red imprimatura over which he applies his thick impasto of color. His painting Cottonwood Canyon vibrates with color as the river seems, literally, to flow through it.
Michael Baum, Downstream Flow, oil on canvas, 20 x 40"
Baum moved from Oklahoma to Colorado to paint the West and proclaims he’s “barely scratched the surface.” He says, “The beauty of light playing across the land goes beyond the visual and digs deep into the soul. It is eternity in a moment of time. Painting the landscape lets me know who and where I am.” His painting Life Blood portrays the river in a calm moment, nourishing the vegetation along its banks.
Upcoming Show
Up to 15 works
May 14-June 5, 2021
Manitou Galleries
225 Canyon Road
Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 986-9833
www.manitougalleries.com
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