Intrigued with New Mexico

I mentioned previously that I had been in New Mexico on a couple of photo shoots for American Motors with Wayne Alexander. Wayne had a small ad agency in the Detroit area and he used me frequently for automotive related graphic design and illustration work. My wife Jeanne usually accompanied me on these outings. We fell in love with New Mexico, especially the Santa Fe area. Santa Fe is one of the largest fine art markets in the country with lots of art galleries. I have always been active in the fine arts and decided to try to do a few paintings and see if I could get one of the galleries to represent me. If I succeeded we would move out of Manhattan and settle in Santa Fe. I had a lot of connections in the ad biz and could still do some commercial work for Detroit, New York and Chicago while living in Santa Fe.
After doing about thirty acrylic paintings we returned to the area and showed my work to several galleries. Unfortunately, I was unable to interest any gallery in taking my work on. That dream suffered a royal defeat. Below are a few of the paintings that I did. A lot of research was involved in doing these works and I really loved painting them. These paintings are based on photographs that I took while working there. It's interesting to note that these paintings were also related to my earlier paintings done for Ford Times magazine when I was just getting started in the business. I'll be posting those in the near future.


THE LEGEND OF ACOMA
The Acoma Pueblo is built on top of a sandstone mesa and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the U. S. The two eggs are part of a legend of the origin of the place. I don't remember their relevance, but one was a parrot egg. I wrote the legend on the back of the painting which is hanging in the Craig Smith Gallery in Union Pier, Michigan.


TRAIL TO CIBOLA


THE ENCHANTED MESA


VIEW OF SANTA FE


ABANDONED MISSION CHURCH
These paintings were all done using acrylics on canvas


CICUYE RUINS
Being unable to connect with a gallery in Santa Fe was disapointing for my wife and I as we had hopes of being able to move out there and further develop my fine art career. At the time I was gradually moving out of the commercial field and working more in the fine art area.