![]() My first visit to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico came about at a pivotal moment in my life. Most famous for its picturesque southwest landscape that inspired the American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, to not only paint its captivating scenery but to buy a ranch out here and spend many of her remaining years in New Mexico, a far cry from the streets of New York City. I have visited three times now twice solo and once with girlfriends of mine. Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú, New Mexico is one of those places. Anything can be painted without representation.” Although it would be another two years until Martin would make her first experiments with abstract art, this quote illustrates that she was feeling constrained by the need to represent objects or places in her paintings.There are a few places that draw me back, again and again. I saw the plains driving out of New Mexico and I thought that the plain had it, just the plane. It was a painting much like New Mexico Mountain Landscape, Taos that Martin must have been thinking of when in 1973 she wrote, “I used to paint mountains here in New Mexico and I thought my mountains looked like ant hills. ![]() Watercolour paints dry almost instantly in these arid conditions this painting has the appearance of having been quickly composed, with rapid brush strokes representing massive geological forms and the surrounding landscape. New Mexico Mountain Landscape, Taos may have been one of them. Martin showed two watercolours at her first museum exhibition, at the Harwood Foundation at the end of the 1947 summer school. Two other watercolours remain from the Taos Art School, as well as several encaustic and oil portraits from around the same time. It is no surprise then that few works from this period remain, especially as Martin was known later in her life to track down and purchase back her earliest work, only to destroy it. The years between 19 could be described as itinerant for Martin, who moved several times across the United States, changing jobs regularly. As a result, the piece shows a technical achievement beyond her status as a student. Agnes Martin in New Mexico, c.1947, photographer unknown.Īlthough this is one of Martin’s earliest existing paintings, she was likely an accomplished amateur before entering the University of New Mexico in 1946-she had been painting in some capacity since her time at Teachers College in New York in 1941. The Slide Trail outside Taos, New Mexico, with Taos Mountain in the distance, 2018, photograph by Cindy Brown for the Taos News. A photograph from that year of Martin standing at an easel in the high desert, wearing an army surplus jacket and blue jeans and concentrating on the composition in front of her, shows the artist working on a similar landscape. She spent the summers of 19 participating in the Taos Art School (the first summer as a student, the second as an instructor). Martin had enrolled in a master of fine arts program at the University of New Mexico in 1946 after having previously trained as an art teacher. With green, brown, and purple watercolour economically applied to paper, Martin captures a likeness of the mountain rising over the Taos plateau. It was executed during the summer of 1947 and is a student work, the product of Martin’s participation in the Taos Summer Field School, a course dedicated to outdoor landscape painting. New Mexico Mountain Landscape, Taos, 1947 may depict Wheeler Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the tallest peak in New Mexico. University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico ![]() Agnes Martin, New Mexico Mountain Landscape, Taos, 1947 ![]()
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