The Rio Grande Country is a painting by artist Lloyd Moylan. It’s about two feet wide and foot and a half tall, painted with watercolor and pencil on paper.
Although Lloyd Moylan’s artistic focus skewed heavily toward northwest New Mexico and Diné (Navajo) subjects, in The Rio Grande Country he shifted his gaze to the area around Alcalde, NM, where he had a home and studio. For more about this painting style and the history of this painting, read the “About this Artwork” section above.
The evocative painting depicts the front of a small, single-story, multi-room adobe church, stretching across the entire width of the scene. The church is painted in a light brown adobe color and features a small dome with a cross perched atop it. The cross is slightly askew and slanting to the right.
In the center of the church’s facade is a brown wood-paneled door framed by a thick adobe casing. A small window is to its left, and the window is also slightly crooked. Further to the left, part of a different room of the structure which has a curved, almost sagging, roof line, is a small, green-painted door set far back into a very thick adobe wall.
A large, bare mountain, rendered in shades of gray green and brown, rises behind the church, dominating the background. To the left of the mountain, a patch of blue sky peeks through an expanse of flat gray clouds. The sunlight streaming down illuminates the church’s cross and casts a warm glow on its facade.
In the foreground, an old woman, bent over and dressed all in brown and black with a headscarf, jacket or shawl, and full-length skirt or dress, walks from left to right across the painting, close to the church’s wood-paneled door. On the left edge of the painting, a rooster with a red comb and black body pecks at the ground, searching for food.
On the right side of the image, a tree with a slender and crooked trunk stands in front of the church. Its bright jewel-toned green leaves catch the sunlight, creating a vivid contrast against the earthy tones of the church and the mountain.
