TWO PAINTERS:

"OCASO DEL SOL EN ESTIO"
acrylic and gold leaf, 27 x 27 inches
© H.Joe Waldrum

H. Joe Waldrum

There is a beautiful place in the United States of  America. It is in northern New Mexico between the two mountain ranges. This place is called 'The Cradle.' Its people, the land, and its elements are special and peculiar. I find the genius of this place reflected in the churches.

H. Joe Waldrum

In 1980 Waldrum began to sketch and paint the Spanish churches of  northern New Mexico. His decision to focus on the sacred adobe structures of the high desert was the critical breakthrough in his art. . . . For Waldrum the churches represent the physical and spiritual reality of the Penitente  people of New Mexico -- the focus of their personal faith and a pervasive part of their daily lives. In 1982 he wrote: "The people of this area have focused their collective thought on their churches. As an artist it is my job  to distill that focus until it communicates."

Patricia Janis Broder, The American West:The Modern Vision, (Little, Brown & Co., Boston)

return to top of page

"AFTERNOON SCHRUBS"
oil, 72 x 60 inches
© RUSSELL HAMILTON

Russell Hamilton

"This series of paintings  reflects my extended perceptual engagement with a specific, private site. As a group, the paintings are an attempt to revisit the mysteries and maintain the intensity."

Russell Hamilton


Hamilton's series of "Yard Paintings" is inspired by the urban landscape in Alburquerque, New Mexico. The familiar details of residential architecture of  the '50s in this city -- a certain style of window or door and the characteristic shrubbery -- imbue these works with a marvelous sense of place. The contemplative spirit in which these images were conceived betrays a particular  mysticism, a sense of the extraordinary lurking everywhere, under and over and behind the ordinary.

 Sandra Martinez, Gallery Owner,
Santa Fe

return to top of page

"PERSECUTION OF AN ESTHETE:
SEBASTIAN AND DIOCLETION"
oil on cnavas, 42 x 60 inches
© DELMAS HOWE

Delmas Howe

About fifteen years ago I first met Delmas in  Amarillo, Texas where he was revered as the wisened cultural hero for a small community of artists and art enthusiasts who were trying to make a civilized oasis out of what seemed to some like a barren backwater.

Delmas was  working on at least two bodies of work: one dealt with the more traditional portraiture and landscape where he explored the personalized representation of friends and places he knows well with skillful drawing and paint handling.  However, it was the other body of work that stood out because it was clearly one of the most original group of paintings I had ever seen. Delmas refers to this extended series as the RODEO PANTHEON and in it he links his  understanding of Greek and Roman mythology and the classical representation of the human figure with his long-standing familiarity of the American West as he creates a new playground for the Greek Gods.

return to top of page