DAVID T. ALEXANDER
Inscapes and the Persistence of Nature
Opening reception 5pm - 7pm Friday, October 25th - December 21st
How do you distill the energy of endless seas and skies, monumental mountains and cliffs, and vast prairies and deserts into something more tangible? It’s something that painter David T. Alexander has endeavored to do with his work for most of his career. Whether on imposing canvases that span several feet or pieces that can be held with two hands, the exuberant, layered brushstrokes packed with color are part of a constant dialogue taking place between Alexander and the natural world.
Much of his latest work is inspired by recent explorations in New Mexico, a state he first visited in 1996 and felt immediately drawn to. “I instantly fell in love with the desert,” he recalls. “I don’t know why, but I feel extremely comfortable there – well, not comfortable because it’s not a comfortable place in the desert physically – but visually I find it astounding.”
Alexander says the work is “an amalgamation of where I’ve hiked, driven through, walked over, looked at, thought about, that is so different than where I live.” Some of the pieces show dramatic shifts between mesas and buttes, rock and sky, while others show a land patterned with sage and juniper. Many reference areas that left him quietly awestruck. “At one point I couldn’t even talk about the landscape I was looking at because it was so different than what I’ve experienced there many times. But I’m always looking for that experience – it’s got to be there for me.”
Each time Alexander puts brush to canvas or pen or pencil to paper, the end result contains a degree of that type of experience. It’s become an almost daily ceremony of endless reexamination and contemplation, of “being in a place over and over and over, until I don’t need to look anymore” Alexander states. “I can honestly say I go to bed, I dream about making art, I wake up and I make more art. I can’t stop. The inquiry is never ending.”
View work by David T. Alexander ►
NICHOLAS HERRERA | Pasión
On display through December 21st
A trail of pickup trucks piled high with timber winds down a mountain road—firewood for heating residents’ homes come winter. A farmer slops new mud on his old horno oven, as his ancestors have done for centuries. A rusted metal heart containing horseshoes, gears, and nuts and bolts of all sizes, all welded together to represent that organ’s hidden inner workings. A line of penitentes (penitents) make their way to church to be blessed.
Such are the images Nicholas Herrera creates in his self-taught, almost primitive style in his studio on ancestral land in El Rito, about an hour north of Santa Fe. Life in these remote northern New Mexico villages, their yearly secular and religious rituals, and the often-harsh realities of life generally—all are woven into his works.
Herrera’s Pasión explores the finality of death and the brutality and heartbreak of war and oppression, with a good dose of current politics. That’s what’s on his mind right now.
View work by Nicholas Herrera ►
EVOKATION | art + culture + inspiration | July 2024 issue
Be aware in the present. Notice the magic and beauty of the moment. These are Jeremy Miranda’s painting mantras. Miranda finds in daily life unlimited inspiration for his paintings. The works he exhibits in Evoke’s Summer Salon are interior environments and exterior scenes close to home.
“I’m finding beauty in everything,” says Miranda, whose latest pieces include images of a pot of boiling water and a simple wooden table with two chairs. Miranda never travels far from home to find his subjects. Instead, he portrays interior and exterior scenes within a five-mile radius of his studio. “I couldn’t paint a place I visit,” he says. “I need to feel a connection to a place. When I do, I start to see the whole universe there. Then I can drift into a kind of cosmic existence when I paint.”
Other artists in the Summer Salon Part lI exhibit include David T. Alexander, Christopher Benson, Lynn Boggess, Esha Chiocchio, Jeremy Mann, Javier Marín, Louisa McElwain, Soey Milk, Kristine Poole, Lee Price, Michael Scott, Andrew Shears, Thomas Vigil, and Aron Wiesenfeld.
read past issues ►
Gallery Info
Gallery hours are: Monday through Saturday, 10 - 5.
* Gallery closed Labor Day, Monday September 2nd
You may reach us via Email and 505.995.9902 telephone messaging daily 10 - 5.
Thank you for your continued support.
LOOKING & SEEING
one long look at one work of art
featuring Nicole by Lee Price
John O'Hern is an arts writer, curator and retired museum director who is providing a weekly contemplation of a single work of art from our gallery. In our fast-paced lives overflowing with information, we find it necessary and satisfying to slow down and take time to look. We hope you enjoy this perspective from John.
From time to time when I was a museum director and parents would recommend the art of their children or that of other relatives, I would hit the jackpot. One of those times was in 2004 when Emilie Price told me her daughter Lee had submitted paintings to be judged into the Regional Exhibition at the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, NY. Lee won Best Work in Oil that year for her small painting of a piece of gold damask with its tightly-painted shimmering highlights and soft shadows. She won another important prize the following year. I knew she was someone to follow but lost track of her when I left the museum and moved to Santa Fe.
But not for long. I moved to Santa Fe in 2007 and Evoke began representing Lee in 2010 just as I was preparing the first of three exhibitions I curated for the gallery. No longer producing intimate paintings of fabric, she had begun painting her Women and Food series in 2007 with the painting Full, a 44 by 54” canvas. She had been painting images of women in rooms with a nebulous relationship to the food they held or happened to be nearby. In Women and Food the relationship became more specific.
“Growing up,” Lee writes, “I lived with my mother and my two older sisters. In our household, women did everything. There were no men's roles because there were no men around. My father had left and, though he continued to live in the same town we did, was not a consistent presence in my life. Both grandfathers had passed away before I was born. No other male relatives lived nearby. I attended an all women’s college. All this has shaped my view of the world.”
“I was 2 or 3 paintings into the series before I realized the subject was me and my compulsive eating disorder which, at the moment, I’m pretty much over. Once I realized it, I was able to continue and then it morphed into different themes over the years.”
The view from above in her paintings is neither voyeuristic nor judgmental. It is her watching herself and, in the instance of Nicole, the subject looking at herself, not as an object, but as a women caught in an obsession and daring anyone to comment on it. “When you’re doing something compulsive,” Lee says, “you can’t stop yourself. You’re watching yourself do it. It’s an out of body experience where you’re watching yourself as if you’re somebody else.”
In an interview with Brianna Lyle of “Flatt” magazine, Lee said, “The majority of my pieces are speaking about checking out; food as a means of distracting yourself from being present. The settings are always peaceful behind the frenetic activity of the subject. These women are searching for solace in an unfit source. The peace is there. It’s obvious. It’s just underneath the behavior. This is how compulsion is. My paintings explore the ways in which we take comfort in food and its pleasures, and the hunger that remains even amidst apparent abundance. Sometimes I’m simply speaking about the search for the lusciousness of life.”
Often, the women (she) have chosen the bathtub or the bathroom floor to indulge. “The private space,” she explains, “emphasizes the secrecy of compulsive behavior and the unusual settings emphasize its absurdity. The solitude/peace of the setting is a good juxtaposition to the frenetic, out-of-control feel of the woman’s actions.”
Nicole is based on a photograph from over 10 years ago. Lee’s paintings are derived from 100s of photographs taken of her carefully choreographed setups often over the course of a entire day. The model is primarily herself, but Nicole contacted Lee on the Internet and asked if she could model.
Sometimes, Lee’s look is meditative or inward looking. At other times she gazes directly at the viewer but is lost in her own state of being. Nicole, on the other hand, presents herself as defiant. “It’s her expressing herself,” Lee comments.
On her Instagram page, Lee has posted the painting of Nicole in progress. “When I paint,” she says, “I go object by object. Sometimes I tackle the figure first. I do the easier stuff after that. I’m definitely not somebody who’s a super lover of the process, though. Sometimes it can be tedious. Right now I’m going full speed preparing for my exhibition, Cake, that will be at Evoke in April. I’m hoping to have 9 new paintings.”
Lee has always been drawn to realism. She says, “Everyone’s either a Vermeer or a Sargent. You can never be the other one. I’m a Vermeer who always wanted to be a Sargent with his gestural brush strokes and soft edges. I have to embrace my Vermeerness.”
She graduated from Moore College of Art in with a BFA in Painting, cum laude. She has studied privately with Alyssa Monks and with Alyssa and Dan Thompson at New York Academy of Art. More recently she has been studying with Christopher Gallego.
“I’ve studied with Alyssa for years,” she relates. “She taught me how to paint the way I paint and about the technical aspects of how I make my paintings. Prior to her, I don’t know if I got anything technical from anyone.
“I’m drawn to studying with Chris. He’s taught me about blending and edges and has me wanting to begin to paint from life. What I get from him is enjoyment.”
In her “Artist’s Statement”, she writes of the consequences of obsession. “One of the most potent messages these pieces deliver is that of excessive waste. Not just material waste but the waste of time and energy that is used up in obsession. Energy that could be directed towards productive endeavors, through our compulsive activity, is instead being used to wrap us in a cocoon. Where we could be walking forward, we instead paralyze ourselves. For the women in these paintings, even with an excess of food, there is no nourishment. Unable to sit with the discomfort/unease of the present moment, these women take in excessive amounts and in the process are shutting out the possibility of being truly nourished.”
