Edgar Alwin Payne’s paintings are often designed not just to show the viewer the landscape, but to help them imagine themselves within it. In Untitled (Grand Canyon), Payne positions the viewer a short distance down a canyon wall trail. This perspective is more intimate than an aerial view or the panorama visible from the canyon’s rim. Immersed within the canyon, the viewer is dwarfed by its hugeness but can also appreciate the architectural features of the canyon walls.
Color: Purple
Mesa Redonia
In his how-to book Composition of Outdoor Painting (1941), Payne described his lofty aim to share the “spiritual flow which encircles animate and inanimate nature—the rhythm of life and the universe” in his paintings. Mesa Redonia (the title appears to be a misnomer for an unidentified landmark) is a prime example of his use of brushstroke, color, and lighting to create atmospheric and mood effects and evoke a sense of awe and wonder.
Nambe Valley, Summer
Sheldon Parsons’ career spanned the first half of the 20th century, when one avant-garde art movement after another rose to defy convention and challenge the foundations of Western American art. As an artist and curator, Parsons bridged the professional divide between “realism” and “modernism”—he both promoted traditional standards while being open to new approaches. His more “realistic” side is at play in Nambe Valley, Summer. The painting adheres to the major conventions of Western art: it is composed according to a clearly defined foreground, middle ground, and background; it takes a panoramic perspective on the landscape; its color palette is tightly controlled; and its brushwork delivers a high degree of finish.
Casa on the Hill
Sheldon Parsons, a leader within the growing Santa Fe artist colony at the beginning of the 20th century, took both sides in the era’s hotly contested artistic debate between “realism” and “modernism” in Western American art, promoting traditional standards without dismissing unconventional ideas. As his career matured, however, Parsons became increasingly experimental in his practice, and bold use of complementary colors became a trademark of the artist’s in his last decade (Parsons died in 1943). In Casa on the Hill, a mix of warm yellow and orange autumn hues stand out against a loosely brushed bright blue sky. Note how the purple shadows cast by towering trees in a latticework pattern on a green-glazed ground make the painting a dance of color.
Storage Barn
In general terms, New Deal art programs sought to create a visual record of American life and American spirit. Artists across the country were deployed to document their communities, and Storage Barn is part of that rich tapestry of “the American scene.” Here, Lloyd Moylan memorializes a specific place at a specific moment in time. The artist must have known this particular subject well to have rendered it with such precision. Notice the six-paneled windows, the water trough slightly askew, and the individual blades of grass—even the weed poking up on the left edge of the building. Something outside the picture to the left casts an elongated, funnel-shaped shadow up the side of the barn and across its roof. Moylan also pays attention to each slope, plane, and crevice of the uniquely formed mountain towering over the barn.
Rain on the Reservation
In Rain on the Reservation, Lloyd Moylan revels in the light-bending, prismatic effects of a New Mexico monsoon falling in swaths on high mountains and mesas. Moylan’s watercolor technique highlights the geometry of the topography: he lets hard edges of paint form, strengthening the outlines and bulky contours of the shapes. He also paints in layers, so that areas of overlap create a multiplicity of triangles in a kaleidoscopic manner. Moylan loved to experiment with different styles, and in this painting, he plays in the space between realism and abstraction.
Navajo Blanket Portfolio – Plate 12
From 1939–1942, the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe sponsored a New Deal Federal Art Project initiative to create a portfolio of fifteen Navajo weaving designs drawn from its collections, and hired artist Louie Ewing to orchestrate the effort. The silkscreen printing process was a relatively new technology to the United States, so Ewing, with assistance from fellow artist Eliseo Rodriguez, had to essentially invent his own version of it. Two hundred of each print were produced. Prints were distributed to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and federal government “Indian service schools,” as well as universities, libraries, and museums nationwide for instructional and educational purposes.
Untitled (Navajo Girl with Lamb)
Untitled (Navajo Girl with Lamb) reveals how the flat aesthetic of the 1930s Studio Style, which dictated Native American painting for the first half of the 20th century and beyond, curtailed artists’ ability to communicate meaning. As told in the Studio Style, Timothy Begay’s (Diné/Navajo) story of the sacred and spiritual relationship between his people and their sheep is reduced to a pleasing, decorative scene.