“With your feet I walk
I walk with your limbs
I carry forth your body
For me your mind thinks
Your voice speaks for me
Beauty is before me
And beauty is behind me
Above and below me hovers the beautiful
I am surrounded by it
I am immersed in it
In my youth I am aware of it
And in old age I shall walk quietly
The beautiful trail.”
Navajo prayer
Loren Mozley (1928)
Andrew Dasburg
American, 1887–1979
Oil on canvas
"An artist’s creative decisions shape the portraits they paint. Andrew Dasburg began this painting as a portrait of a ranch worker in Taos, New Mexico. When the worker moved away, Dasburg asked his former student Loren Mozley to model. Mozley remembered posing in front of a quilt, but Dasburg ultimately decided to paint him before a simple, gray backdrop. Mozley’s checkered jacket stands out because of this choice. Its pattern likely interested the artist who included similar abstract arrangements in other paintings."
José Herrera (1938)
Peter Hurd
American, 1904-1984
Tempera on panel
"Born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico, Peter Hurd painted the people and landscape of nearby San Patricio, where he maintained a cattle ranch. José Herrera was a farm hand on the Hurd ranch for more than 20 years. Hurd painted his friend many times and once called him "one of the most paintogenic people I know." Here he is shown looking directly out at the viewer against a panoramic view of the Hondo Valley. Filling up much of the composition, Herrera appears as strong as the mountain range behind him. The painter's use of tempera accentuates the effects of arid land and air integral to the scene. Hurd convinced his famous brother-in-law Andrew Wyeth also to adopt the medium."
Pueblo Tesuque, No. 2 (1917)
George Wesley Bellows
Oil on canvas, mounted on plywood
George Bellows spent the summer of 1917 mainly in California on a break from his teaching at New York's Art Students League. Pueblo Tesuque, No. 2 was painted on his return trip, when he visited in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tesuque Pueblo, near Santa Fe, offered Bellows the perfect opportunity to paint the Southwestern scenery and American Indian subjects that were increasingly popular around World War I. Bellows' composition depicts the daily life of the pueblo and includes its white adobe church on the left. A man dressed for the Green Corn dance, an annual rite of renewal prior to the corn harvest, adds an exotic air to the scene as does the highly keyed palette of purple, red-orange, green and blue.
Maverick Mist 