Into That Light: Agnes Martin & NMWA Artist Talk
Into That Light
There is a front hall at Gallery 215 in Taos.
Thick adobe walls. Ancient wooden floors. Carvings.
Space holding silence the way only very old walls do.
Home to Untitled Orange and Yellow, 1994. Agnes Martin. Acrylic and graphite on canvas. Sixty inches by sixty inches. A grid painting from the final decade of her life, having already re-rooted in New Mexico. She stripped everything unnecessary from her practice. She became one of the most consequential painters of the twentieth century.
Humbly, on July 18, my work steps into that hall.
Two Artists. Two Cities. Same Sky.
Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the first women in New York City to live in a skyscraper.
She took an elevator eleven floors to her studio. Painted the skyline. Painted the sunset from above the New York street. Fierce. Visionary. Completely herself.
I learned this yesterday from Cody Hartley, Executive Director of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Standing in the Sheldon.
The Sheldon is one of O'Keeffe's most famous painted buildings. She lived there…