"Hat and Heels" by Andrée Hudson

Andrée Hudson’s paintings use contrasting light and dark colors to invite the viewer to share in the subject’s innocent sensuality. Andrée’s large, dramatic brush strokes capture the life of her subjects, as though they live and move among us, touching the viewer’s soul with their very being.

"Cows and Cowboys" by Andrée Hudson

Andrée studied formally at the Maryland Institute College of Art, receiving her BFA in Illustration and Visual Communication. Early in her career, medical professionals took notice of her talent for capturing skeletal and muscular form and contracted her for illustrations in various medical publications and textbooks. But Andrée’s true passion is letting the beauty of creation speak for itself through her paintings of living form.

"Whatcha' Lookin' At?" by Andrée Hudson

Each subject, whether child, adult, animal, or landscape, is simply caught living in a moment of time; but it is a time of contemplative silence, an invitation to join that subject in a part of life’s journey. With her gift to portray life in paintings, Andrée entreats each of us to join her subjects in their captured moments, to come away having related intimately with each piece.

"Off My Back" by Andrée Hudson

"Gone for Parts" by Jono Tew

“I grew up in coastal New England and have always held the beauty of the landscape in high regard. However, it is only in the last few years that I have turned to this genre of painting as my primary source of self-expression. I have found that not only can I chronicle a sort of personal history through landscape painting, but I can also explore the abstract visual principles that attracted me when I was younger. I began my landscape work with the concept of deconstruction. I break down the subject into a field of blocks.

"Night Lights" by Jono Tew

Then, treating each block as an individual painting, I reconstruct the landscape into a sort of painted ‘quilt’. Acrylics enable me to build texture quickly and give me the ability to mask-off recently worked areas without having to wait for the longer drying time of oil paint. I believe this style reflects my interest in the work of Paul Cezanne and the Cubist movement that eventually spawned from his visual philosophy. While this form of painting remains an ongoing experiment, my current series of paintings has a more traditional feel. I moved to New Mexico in 2005 and was immediately struck by the landscape. This was not the desert that I’d grown accustomed to watching in roadrunner cartoons as a child.

"Roadster Farm" by Jono Tew

Rural New Mexico has a pastoral, idyllic quality that, while reminiscent of the countryside in the Southeast, is completely unique unto itself. The feeling of isolation can be both haunting and beautiful in the same breath. In this series I’ve found that oil paint is better suited to the expression of flowing skies, mesas and plains. Nowhere else have I found the same humbling vastness of space coupled with tiny reminders of human existence.

"Little Roadhouse" by Jono Tew

While I am still in the early stages of this series, I’ve already found a distinctive visual style that unintentionally evokes some of the same spirit found in the work of Thomas Hart Benton. A crumbling barn at the foot of a mesa, a fence in the middle of thousands of acres of open plain, a dirt road rambling through seemingly abandoned hills: these are the images I now find myself trying to express. For the past few years I have been experimenting with landscape painting in varying degrees of abstraction/representation.

I like to paint with both oil and acrylic and, depending on the medium, I employ a very different style for each. With the oils, my paint application is thinner and the imagery is more fluid and dreamlike. With the acrylics I have developed a technique that breaks the picture plane into separate cells. Sometimes these cells are pure blocks of color, making the painting more abstract, and sometimes they contain more specific information, giving a more representational feel. I like to take advantage of the acrylic’s faster drying properties to build up a more textured surface.”

"Early Evening" by Jono Tew

Encantado is not only a resort, it is an experience.  Coming from Santa Fe, the mountains and sunsets have always tugged at my heart strings and the drive out to Encantado brings me to that exact feeling!

Chef Charles Dale

And after my 15 minute drive from the gallery, pulling into the parking lot, I had to stop when I got out of the car because the resort is truly beautiful.  I recommend arriving before sunset and having a drink on their beautiful patio, then a casual stroll to Terra, an amazing restaurant with excellent service.  The atmosphere is high-end but the attitudes are high-quality.

Terra, Encantado’s signature restaurant features majestic views of the surrounding vistas, offering an inventive interpretation of American Cuisine with regional influences. Using organic ingredients, many sourced locally, it offers a dining experience in perfect harmony with the Encantado lifestyle.

You truly deserve a break and when you arrive in Santa Fe, make your way to Encantado, if for no other reason than to walk the grounds of the resort.  Truly experience a Santa Fe landscape and see why our artists live here and make Santa Fe their home.  Visit http://www.encantadoresort.com/ or call them at 505.946.5700.

The Aura of Nature

For those who love the land, there is a quality to nature’s beauty that is difficult to express – until you see a painting by Marshall Noice. In his light – and color-filled works, the landscape comes dazzlingly alive. Noice combines the ethereal effects of light with the visual impact of an expanded color palette to produce canvases that thrill the senses while speaking to the soul on a deeper level.

"Last Shadow" by Marshall Noice

Noice paints the dramatic terrain of the west – its powerful mountain ranges, dense stands of trees, and sweeping lines. His vistas have an abstract quality which lends a dreamlike feeling to them.

“Painting is my way of engaging with the land,” professes Noice, who was born in North Dakota and has lived most of his life in Montana. “The land has fascinated me as much as anything in my life. I’m always observing the light.”

Noice had the great fortune to work with Ansel Adams, the celebrated nature photographer. “He was the biggest influence in my art,” remarks Noice. “With him I gained the ability to see light. He was an extraordinarily gifted teacher.”

"Riverside Buffalo Hills" by Marshall Noice

Noice’s work as a photographer has helped him immeasurably as a painter. “Getting the light right is the biggest challenge. It is as much about the air between objects as about the objects themselves. That look of luminosity is difficult for most artists. But when you can see it in the environment, it all comes together.” He still takes photographs but concentrates his energy on oil painting, noting, “You can’t match the richness of oil on canvas.”

The luminous quality in Noice’s work is inspired by another great artist – Mark Rothko. A pivotal experience for Noice as a youth was seeing a Rothko exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. “I was literally weak in the knees. I still think of those paintings. Rothko had created edges that heightened the sense of luminosity. I believe he understood light better than anyone else. Light just emanates from his paintings.”

"Heading Towards Swan Lake" by Marshall Noice

Noice achieves this same mastery of color relationships in his own work. “I capture a sense of place, but it’s my sense, my color. It’s delicate, because color is a strange animal. I work to create tone and value in an expressive way that resonates with me. At times, my color is almost outrageous – on the edge of being out of control.” Perhaps it is that quality that makes each painting so exciting. “I love the great colors available to artists these days,” he confides. “The old masters didn’t have access to them. Who knows what their work would have looked like if they had?”

Three themes run through Noice’s life: art, nature and music. He describes himself as having been “a voracious image maker since age two,” growing up in an intellectual family that contained artists and musicians on both sides.

"Clouds Somers" by Marshall Noice

His love of the outdoors began when his father, a college professor, moved the family from their home in Minnesota to Kalispell, Montana. The area in and around Glacier Park, he relates, “became a touchstone for me. It is country I respond to, where I feel most centered.” Roaming around the Rockies, camping and hiking, he sketches and photographs in black and white. “I want my memory of the scene to determine my palette,” he points out.

"On Orchard View Drive" by Marshall Noice

Noice played drums from an early age and performed professionally for four years. He plays drums today in a blues band and also in a 14 piece Latin jazz orchestra. “People ask if music influences my painting, and I say ‘Oh, yes!’” His tastes are eclectic – he might listen to John Coltrane and Cuban jazz followed by Handel’s Messiah.

The vigorous oil paintings Noice creates have won him acclaim and awards. In addition to landscapes, he has painted a series of works depicting nineteenth – century Plains Indian war shirts found in an extraordinary collection of artifacts in Canada. The artifact images are more representational than his landscapes, which tend toward abstraction.

Noice has worked in various styles during his career and states, “I feel a painting has to work on a purely abstract level.” His landscapes often contain stands of lodgepoles pines and aspens that function as abstract elements. The artist comments: “I love the way the views in the west are broken by a curtain of trees. I enjoy the complications and layering in the vistas, and the bands of color in the landscape. These are like Rothko paintings in nature.”

"Trio Shades of Red" by Marshall Noice

Always looking for the light, Noice finds a visual richness in his work that changes in different settings and times of day. “When you see different things going on in the scene, it has more impact,” he believes.

Today, Noice enjoys an active life of painting in Kalispell, Montana, where he lives with his wife and four children – a son and three daughters. He finds his work continues to evolve, becoming more complex, with more layering and a more sophisticated approach to color.

“Painting for me is pure joy,” he says. “There’s no labor in it. Of course, I struggle. But I’m fascinated by creating a painting that holds the spirit of a place.” Marshall has been showing at Waxlander Gallery and Sculpture Garden in Santa Fe for over 16 years.

"Across The Stillwater" by Marshall Noice

View available Marshall Noice paintings at http://waxlander.com/artist/21/Marshall-Noice!

Estrella Del Norte Vineyard

Estrella Del Norte Vineyard is in Nambe, just 15 minutes north of Santa Fe. Owners Richard and Eileen Reinders welcome visitors to sample their outstanding wines in their tasting room.  Have an upcoming event? The vineyard is a wonderful venue that can be booked for wedddings, wine dinners, corporate picnics and dinners, and holiday parties. It can be a do-it-yourself event, or the vineyard’s event planner partners can see to every detail. Attend the wine festival coming this summer, 2011!

Snow in the Vineyard!

Coming Soon: Waxlander Gallery and Sculpture Garden has teamed up with Estrella Del Norte Vineyards to bring a  beautiful sculpture stroll through the vineyard. Including Waxlander sculptors John Maisano, Laurel Peterson Gregory, Chris Turri, and Richard Pankratz… more artists to come!