Taos painter Jerry Jordan believes everything happens for a reason. Nothing is coincidence, chance or even fate. In the summer of 1984, during a trip to the Taos Pueblo to meet potential models for an important new series of paintings, Jordan met resident Jimmy Reyna, who would later tell him, “The dream is already done. You must only walk to catch up to it.” He would carry those words with him every day after.
All Our Hopes Are Sacred, oil, 34 x 60”
In August of 2021, I found myself sitting with Jordan on the balcony at Manitou Galleries in New Mexico. The Santa Fe Indian Market, the first one held after a skipped year due to the pandemic, rumbled beneath us on Palace Avenue. The artist was reflecting on his career and the path that brought him to Santa Fe that day. “More than 70 years have led me to this point,” Jordan said. “Everything happens for a reason.” Moments later he would ask me to write a book about his life and career in the art world. And moments earlier he had been offered a major solo show by Legacy Gallery owner Brad Richardson. If there was ever a time for self-reflection, that was it.
Small Talk, oil, 30 x 36”
Two years later, Jordan is reaching the end of a magnificent achievement that will culminate in the October 7 exhibition Together Always Our Spirit held at Legacy’s location on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. The show will be followed shortly by the release of the book Jerry Jordan: Together Always Our Spirit. “This is the biggest show of my career,” he says. “It’s going to have 25 paintings, which for me is a huge amount.”
Jerry Jordan with one of the final works completed for the show, It’s About the Dance.
After our initial conversation in Santa Fe in August 2021, Jordan immediately got to work organizing a photoshoot with his models. Nearly six weeks later, he was putting the final details together for an October 5 shoot that would last all day. It nearly didn’t happen, until there everyone was, ready to take Jordan’s directions. “We had two pickups, two horse trailers, a bunch of horses and riders, five vehicles total…it was a caravan. I was out of material for the show, and I wanted fresh subjects, so we did it right,” Jordan says. “We shot some at the Millicent Rogers home, and then later went out to Hope Lake in Colorado. It was an all-day event. The funny part was two weeks later I went to a powwow with my daughter J’Brenta, and we were sitting next to these singers. It was my group of riders.”
Trail to the Past, oil, 40 x 60”
Jordan was no stranger to large photoshoots. In 1984, around the time he met Jimmy Reyna, was when he first worked with Taos Pueblo models. It was Reyna who put him in touch with three Taos elders—Telesfor Goodmorning Reyna, John Marcus (White Clay Dancer) and Joe “Sun Hawk” Sandoval—for an important early painting, Changeless in a Changing Time, set in front of the historic Taos Inn. (The three men can be seen in a new work, Small Talk.) It was that shoot that eventually led to a six-week stay at the Taos Pueblo, by invitation from the Reyna Family, who adopted the painter as their own. Jordan has painted the Taos people ever since.
At that time, Jordan was not known as the impressionist Taos painter he is today. The Texas-born artist, who cut his teeth on paint-by-numbers kits as a youngster, was primarily known for tighter, more detailed landscapes and bird paintings. Taos would transform him, though. In 1965, Jordan and his wife, Marilyn, made important early trips to Taos, where they were captivated by the land, people, culture and the abundance of art, including all of the great works by members of the Taos Society of Artists. It was there, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where they fell in love with Taos. Over the course of three decades, they would live there three separate times, as well as run and own several art galleries. They still live there today.
Constant Harmony, oil, 16 x 20”
Jordan’s October show is a culmination of those early years in Taos, but also so much more: There were the years studying under artists Robert “W.R.” Thrasher and Rod Goebel, the famous Taos painter. The ups and downs of running a gallery. A detour through the music business, during which Jordan and his brother, and both their wives, would play all around the country as a gospel quartet. There was success and failure, love and loss, and everything in between. How do you sum up a man’s life with one show? It’s just not possible. And yet, Jordan is painting like it’s all on the line.
Imprinted Memories, oil, 40 x 40”
“Producing for this show is not like painting for any other gallery show. It’s not like that at all. This show has to be a cohesive statement about something, and the images had to be decided very early to begin to express what I wanted to say,” Jordan says. “This is a story about Taos. All 25 paintings of it. When I lived there in 1965 and then moved back to Texas, I told myself, ‘I will go back.’ And I did. This show is the result of me going back to Taos. And I can’t begin to express the magnitude of telling these stories and how they relate to my 66 years of painting.”
Brothers, oil, 25 x 30”
Works in the show include In the Presence of Ancestors, which shows Jordan’s modernist way of perceiving his Southwestern subjects. “When I drew that painting I didn’t yet have a title. As I was putting color in the painting, I realized I had to leave some of the figures in white. Those are the spirits of the ancestors,” he says. “It lent itself well to modern interpretation.”
Another work that shows how modern Jordan’s painting can be is Constant Harmony, a 16-by-20-inch piece showing a trio of figures wearing pink and purple blankets. The Taos Pueblo, New Mexico sky and distant mountains fill the canvas behind them. A viewer can almost count the brushstrokes—they are loose and applied with a raw, but still delicate, power. Some of the larger works are slightly tighter in detail, like Trail to the Past or All Our Hopes Are Sacred,both 60 inches wide, but they also reveal a confident hand guiding the brush through complex compositions that reveal a mastery of form, light and color.
Dreams Become a Source of Destiny, oil, 28 x 26”
Several of the titles use the word “dream”—The Color of Dreams, Dreams Become a Source of Destiny and The Land of Dreams—a point that I bring up to the artist. “What’s funny is I’m also giving a talk at the opening of the show and it’s called ‘Dream Yet Again.’ It goes back to this idea that some dreams don’t work out, and how some dreams are all gone from people. At different points, I thought my dreams were over. But this show has presented me with the dream rebirthed,” Jordan says. “Your dreams can fail, and you can fail your dreams, but as long as you’re living and still trying there is always still hope to succeed. Here I am at 79 years old and dreaming yet again. Failure is preparation for success, and you’ll never get better without failing a few times.”
A Moment to Savor, oil, 36 x 36”
After a pause and a silent moment of reflection, Jordan, on the eve of what may be the greatest show of his entire career, is still hearing what was told to him so many years before: “The dream is already done. You must only walk to catch up to it.” —
Jerry Jordan: Together Always Our Spirit
October 7-16, 2023; reception, by-draw sale and auction, Oct. 7, 5-7 p.m.
Legacy Gallery, 225 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 986-9833, www.legacygallery.com
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