MaLin Wilson-Powell

For thirty years, Sarah Bienvenu's experiences painting and exploring New Mexico's mountains, canyons, and deserts have given her a unique ability to disentangle and interpret these past layers of change. She finds beauty in nature's ability to reveal accidental compositions through patterns and asymmetry: "I look to the land to tell me how best to paint it, using the natural abstract shapes I see." Being attuned to such abstractions--the undulations of a dry riverbed, the jaggedness of rock against sky--is where abstraction becomes detail: detail of texture, detail of shape, detail of light and color and composition.Watercolors provide the perfect medium for matching the immense variation and subtlety of Bienvenu's Subject. A closer look reveals that each individual element, as in nature, harmonizes with the collective whole. Realism is discovered in consonance: from a cast of light to a balance of colors.

Santa Fe and Taos were among the most important national and international art communities during the 1920s and 1930s; this book explores their similarities, differences, and connections. Legions of American and European artists found new beginnings in the physical and cultural landscapes of northern New Mexico, resulting in a new and deeply rooted orientation for modern art in America. Produced on the occasion of the New Beginnings traveling exhibition, this lavishly illustrated catalogue presents 111 objects by 72 artists from the Tia Collection, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures. To encourage a fresh view of the shift from representation to diverse branches of Modernism, the artworks are grouped into three sections: by the four seasons, by the vibrant mixture of Native American, Hispano and Anglo themes, and by studio made still-lifes and portraits. Work by artists such as Ernest L. Blumenschein, E. Irving Couse, Stuart Davis, Leon Gaspard, Robert Henri, John Marin, John Sloan, and Walter Ufer are juxtaposed with lesser known or virtually unknown works by William Verplanck Birney, Richard Crisler, Katherine Levin Farrell, Jan Matulka, Arthur Musgrave, Polia Pillin, and Beulah Stevenson. The exhibition will travel to the Scottsdale Museum of the West, Scottsdale, Arizona; Booth Western Art Museum Cartersville, Georgia; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; and the Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, Montana.