New Mexico Landscapes

The natural features and landscapes of New Mexico are some of the most varied and unique places in the United States. Blue skies and vast open spaces sometimes inhabited by mountains, deserts, forests, or rivers have long attracted the gaze of artists. New Mexico Landscapes featured works on paper that encapsulate a variety of artistic approaches to depicting the land. Realistic representations, abstract compositions, imaginative interpretations, and an acknowledgement of history shaped by layers of colonization, were some of the ways in which artists in this exhibition communicate their relationships with the land.

New Mexico Landscapes featured a range of mediums including photography, prints, watercolors, paintings, and collage. The exhibition included works by Jaune Quick-to-see Smith, Howard Cook, Ernest Knee, Dan Namingha, Eliot Porter, Jerry West, Felice Lucero and more. The artworks included explore how a place can be felt and experienced through visual depictions. The diverse works incorporated plant life, landforms, architecture and references to human relationships to the land and each other.

Artists’ connections to history as well as their lived experiences inform how they see the land, and thus how they make art. New Mexico Landscapes included works that demonstrate how multi-faceted New Mexico is and how creative modes of making reflect a sense of place that is sometimes beautiful and sometimes a site of violent histories. While the stories of these lands are complex many of the artists were also conveying a sense of querencia—the place where one's strength is drawn from; where one feels at home; the place where you are your most authentic self.