On a shelf in Kathryn Stedham’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, studio is a small box containing 6-by-8-inch plein air studies of the Southwestern landscape—a treasure trove of memories. She moved West in 2005, immediately charmed by the vastness, the massive geologic forms and the brilliant light. She hikes, rides horseback and meditates in the vastness, absorbing it and transferring her impressions to canvas. “The inspiration is something that comes in and becomes embodied in the paint,” she explains.
Enduring West, oil on canvas, 30 x 40"
“I want the viewers of my paintings to have the experience I had. I want the paintings to be authentic. I’m always in the landscape, studying the color, studying the light. I see myself as a very very small and fleeting part of the landscape. The formations I paint will endure beyond us.” 
Folded Blanket Place, oil on canvas, 30 x 36"
Her latest paintings will be in the exhibition Enduring West at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe from August 27 through September 18.
“I begin with a photograph or a plein air study and the rest is from memory. I don’t use drawings and will load my brush and start painting. I establish the angles of the landscape forms to set up the composition. When I’m painting, I ask myself, ‘What was it about this place that made you remember it and want to paint it?’ It could have been the remarkable magical light or simply the feeling of being there.” She paints alla prima, applying the wet paint directly to previous layers of still wet paint. “I use a lot of paint,” she says. The rich, expressive and textured surfaces of her paintings express the vitality of the rock formations and the always changing effect of light.
Shown Forth, Badlands NM, oil on canvas, 16 x 20"
The 30-by-40-inch title painting in the exhibition, Enduring West, is remarkably similar to her 6-by-8-inch plein air study, attesting to her ability to quickly get to the essence of a scene.
She paints more than what she sees, drawn “to excavate the bones of existence in this terrain where the West is still wild and free and to be an explorer of this ineffable mystery.” —
Upcoming Show
Up to 12 works
Aug. 27-Sept. 18, 2021
Blue Rain Gallery
544 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501,
(505) 954-9902, www.blueraingallery.com
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