Coming Together

A future painting.  This is a tree on the low road to Santa Fe on a dangerous curve in the road. Didn't feel safe doing it plein air

 

Taos and our too short venture into Santa Fe, New Mexico, showed us a unique coming together of cultures, not always a mixing, but a respectful influencing and sharing.  It makes for vibrant food, art and architecture.

Taos Pueblo.  Must pay high fee to paint there.

In Taos we spent a few hours at the famous Taos Pueblo and discovered a shop owner and pottery artist by the name of Carpio Bernal.  In his youth he had toured the country in the American Indian Theatre Ensemble and had performed and become friends with the now famous Dame Helen Mirren when she was with the Royal Shakespeare Company (proof provided by a book she'd written with his picture with her in it and her personalized inscription).  He chose to return to his beloved pueblo. Dame Helen visited him and his family a few years ago in Taos and present him with her signed book. His patient wife, rolling her eyes, had endured the Helen Mirren story many times, which was nonetheless interesting to these tourists and garnered them a pottery purchase!

In Santa Fe we, of course, meandered through all the wares of the American Indian artists in the central square, and then savored several hours in the nearby Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.  We were awakened to her watercolor work and to her Hawaiian period, which re-energized her career and work.

From our B&B in Taos, we had a daily coming together of morning fellowship at breakfast, meeting and greeting fellow travelers from around the country.  We heard stories and made new friends.

The diversity and sharing of the southwest was not lost on us.  We always incorporate something new from our trips into our everyday lives—from Taos: green chilies, boldness in painting, good stories, and new friends!

 What’s on the horizon?  We head southeast for a painting holiday in Key West, Florida.

 

(The answer to the riddle posed in my newsletter: What do Dame Helen Mirren, a potter and Georgia O’Keeffe have in common is . . .  Taos—O'Keeffe was in Taos for a good bit in the late 1930s before going off to her beloved Abiquiu, NM and much later still to Santa Fe.)

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