Margi Lucena

The light and color of the southwest landscape captivate Margi Lucena and are the enduring subjects of her illustrative pastels on panel.  Her intimate works convey an honest admiration for the desert, its rocks, canyons, cactus, trees, and skies.  As she says, “I try to paint what I see and how I feel about the beauty of the natural landscape that surrounds us.”  Painted mostly en plein air, Margi’s work empathetically details the characteristic qualities of light and shadow in the New Mexico landscape throughout all four seasons; the thin cold of winter and the lush heat of summer.  Margi rapidly captures the shape of cool color in canyon shadows and the brevity of warm highlights on the edges of chamisa plants or cactus.  With a fast and gutsy approach she achieves a rendering of the essential qualities that make the central and northern New Mexico environment particular and enchanting. 

Margi’s alluring surfaces are texturally intriguing.  Chalk pastels, her medium of choice, are pure pigment with minimal binder added, and display saturated color in a drawn mark; they are gritty and often gestural.  The panels’ surfaces are further embellished with a toned and textured primer, allowing the chalk pastel to visually protrude from the flat surface.  She frames her work soon after a piece is finished to protect it and intentionally uses the clearest anti-reflective glass that allows her colors to be viewed at their greatest intensity. 

The impermanence of color and light as well as the fleetingness of the seasons are often the subject of Margi’s landscapes.  Christine Proskow, who writes for the Pastel Journal, admires Lucena’s pastels and states that “No matter which season she seeks to portray, Lucena is adept in apprehending both the obvious and hidden beauty in the landscape around her…with a sensitivity that reveals her awe and fascination with her environment.”  Many of the places she depicts are well-known landmarks in the New Mexico landscape, such as the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos and the distinctive ridges that surround Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keefe’s home and studio.  She revisits several locations annually, such as the Bosque del Apache, to capture new color, new seasons, and a fresh take on the geography of the arid desert.    

Margi has exhibited in numerous regional juried exhibitions, including the National Pastel Painting Competition. She is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of New Mexico and in 2011/2012 won the Pastel Society of New Mexico National Competition. Margi Lucena resides in Socorro, NM. 

Josh Elliot

Mathias Joseph Alten

Frederick Mulhaupt

Known for his skillful depictions of the landscape and seascapes of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, Frederick Mulhaupt (1871-1838) was very much a part of that region's art community in the early part of the 20th century.  His paintings, especially the working harbor scenes, captured the essence of the area, which was already a favorite spot of famous painters such as Winslow Homer and Fitz Hugh Lane.

Art Books of Interest

Cyrus Afsary

Cyrus Afsary studied art under the strict discipline of the Russian Realist style of painting, graduating with two degrees. He has won numerous awards, including the Best of Show at the C M Russell Show of Original Western Art and the Exceptional Merit Award from the National Arts Club at the 1986 Pastel Society of America show. 

He has also received gold and silver medals from the National Academy of Western Art and was the first recipient of the coveted Lougheed Memorial Award. Cyrus won the Painting Award for “ Mystical Transformation” at the Buffalo Bill Art Show in 2006 and also shared in the choice award. In 2007 he was awarded the Best of Show at the Eiteljorg Museum and in 2009 at the Charles Russell Museum he received the staff choice award, for “Entrance to Shrine” and in 2010 the Williams Award for Collectors’ Reserve at the Gilcrease Museum, Oklahoma.

Afsary is an artist /member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He participates annually in the Prix de West invitational, and the Masters of the American West Exhibition at the Autry Museum in California, the Eitejorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, and also The Buffalo Bill show in Cody, Wyoming. He was featured in the 2002 Gilcrease Museum Rendezvous in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is also a member of the Northwest Rendezvous Group.

Afsary and his work appear in numerous publications, including American Artist, Art of The West, South West Art, Western Art Collector, Who’s Who in American Art. "The Consummate Artist” by John Geraghty, published in the Western Art Collector Magazine in 2009 certainly presents the passion Afsary has for his painting.

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell (1888-1972) 

Early San Diego Plein Air Painter

Many outstanding and celebrated artists called the San Diego area home during the heyday of California impressionism. Among them, Maurice Braun, Alfred Mitchell, Charles Fries, Charles Reiffel, Edith White, George Spangenberg, Leonard Lester, Ernest Pohl, and Leon Bonnet.

Alfred Mitchell's stature as one of our country's finest plein air artists has grown over time. His San Diego mentor was Maurice Braun and it was under Braun's tutelage that Mitchell decided to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to further his studies. His teachers included Garber, Hale and Breckenridge and while in Pennsylvania, he developed a lasting relationship with Edward Redfield, one of America's greatest landscape artists.  He was in love with painting and his work conveys this.  He attended classes variously from 1916-1920 and painted in the New Hope area well into the 1920s. His work not only reflects these teachers' brilliance, but also their discipline.

His remarkable palette of rich colors have stood up against the ravages of time and weather (most Mitchell paintings are in excellent condition). This can be attributed to his fastidious special preparation of linseed oil and paint which he would boil, store in clear jars and allow to be bleached by the sun. When compared with the paint of many other American artists one can see the difference. Mitchell's paint is richer and more sensuous. He sought bright colors to capture the local landscape. In a letter to his brother he states, "If you are interested in capturing the sunlight, you will find brilliant colors and strong contrasts a big help. It is simple enough to make quiet colors by toning them down, but you can't make them brilliant unless you have brilliant colors on your palette."  Much of his early work exhibits this "brilliance" of color, though he was capable of conveying varying degrees of tonality. Redfield's influence can be seen in his glowing creations of brilliant snow covered landscapes and Garber in his atmospheric paintings of fog and overcast days.

He painted the scenes of San Diego en plein air and thus his paintings give us a glimpse of southern California as it really was. Mitchell would paint 8" x 10" and 16" x 20" masonite boards on location (the 8 x 10s being a 16 x 20 panel cut into fourths). Many of his larger paintings (almost invariably on canvas) were produced in his studio, though he would on occasion paint a larger canvas outdoors.

Mitchell's career encompassed different styles and periods of style development. His paintings run from realism to impressionism with many of his works taking on a more regionalist flavor especially from the late 1940s into the 1950s. He would apply these different approaches to what he felt would best convey his feelings of the scene and thus his painting style cannot be attributed accurately to specific time periods.

Mitchell taught privately for many years, influencing a whole generation of San Diego artists with his traditional values of composition and draftsmanship.