Louisa McElwain 1953 - 2013
Retrospective online catalogue 2013
1
Cover: Pursuit of Happiness, 2012, oil on canvas, 52 x 52
1
Louisa McElwain, 1953 - 2013, was a renowned New Mexico painter famous not only for her thickly impasted landscape paintings of the Southwest, but also her larger than life personality and adventurous, joyful soul. Louisa lived fully with an extraordinary view and zest for life, which was unrivaled and contagious. Internationally recognized as a master painter, Louisa was a highly creative, intellectual mind, fully immersed in her spirituality, a great humanitarian, a self-sufficient gardener and ranch woman with immense compassion for her animals and the land. Her presence was like the summer storms she painted - always a vivacious and refreshing surprise. She accurately dubbed herself an “extreme painter�. Her bliss and fulfillment came to her when she was painting. She frequently shared the stories of the power of nature pulsating through her body when she was one with her environment, and her astonishment of the paintings that resulted. The intense passion in which Louisa painted crossed over to all areas in her life; she was a bright burning flame that went out at her prime and the peak of her career. Her marks are not only found on her canvases, but on the hearts of each of us that knew her. 2
As I Remember the Lake, 1988, oil on canvas, 34 x 46
Louisa once said “I never want to forget that what I am looking at is paint on canvas.” Paint on canvas is inescapable in her dramatic paintings of the landscape of Northern New Mexico. Broad strokes of color applied with masonry trowels capture the energy of the landscape in frozen moments. Her “joyous exploration of the sensual potential of oil paint” resulted in a unique style that captured her relationship to the landscape.
3
She claimed “It took me years to recover from art school” but she chose the best from her education to form her career. She had studied with Neil Welliver at Skowhegan during a summer in Maine, and studied with him again at the University of Pennsylvania. The color theories of Josef Albers conveyed through Welliver taught her “Instead of relying on a tonal structure, a painting is built on the relationship of colors. I came to understand how light is created in a painting through the relationships of colors to each other, rather than by a tonal structure of lights and darks.”
The Rio Grande Slides Past Black Mesa, 1985, oil on canvas, 36 x 56
4
NFS
Pajarito, 1985, oil on canvas, 18 x 18
Untitled (New Mexico), 1985, oil on canvas, 10 x 12
Grounded in color and the physical properties of oil paint, she found a way to invite her viewers into her painted landscapes which are embodiments of her actual emotional relationship to it. Her connectedness to the landscape and her awareness the she was “not the origin of this creativity that’s flowing through me,” sometimes caused her to stop at the end of a painting and exclaim “Whoa! Where did that come from?”
5
Sangre de Cristo Chapel, Noon, 1990, oil on canvas, 16 x 28
Thunderhead, 1989, oil on canvas, 22 x 30
6
NFS
Browsed Willows, 2006, oil on canvas, 12 x 24
7
Dark Arroyo, 1990, oil on canvas, 24 x 36
A painting from 1990, Dark Arroyo, shows her fully in control of her talent. A flattened sense of perspective and luscious paint may recall Bay Area painters such as Wayne Thiebaud, but the style is hers. It is also a rare example of her commenting on man’s impact on the environment in which she depicts detritus in the dry arroyo. John O’Hern | Western Art Collector Magazine, August 2013
8
Untitled (pier), 1972, oil on canvas, 14 x18
NFS
9
Lake Sunapee, 1976, oil on canvas, 12 x 19
10
Camp Solitude, (Bill McElwain), 1977, 14 x 12
NFS
11
Hemlocks at Sunapee, 1977, 14 x 11
12
NFS
Maine, 1977, oil on canvas, 12 x 16
NFS
13
Sunapee, 1977, oil on canvas, 11 x 15
14
NFS
French Grunt, 1980, watercolor, 15 x 24
15
Barracuda, Malecumbe Key, 1981, watercolor, 11 x 22
16
Large Mouth Bass, 1985, etching, 18 x 24
17
Close to my Heart, 2001, acrylic on panel, 16 x 20
18
Sandy Beach, 1991, oil on canvas, 16 x 20
19
Petitt Lake, 1999, oil on canvas, 14 x 22
20
Rue de Village (France), 1974, oil on canvas, 12 x 16
21
Stream Bed, Cobbles, 1990, oil on canvas, 26.5 x 26.5
22
Boletes, 2003, oil on canvas, 8 x 16
23
Pots and Vegetables, 2009, oil on canvas, 12 x 24
24
Peach Tree with Crutches, 2008 , oil on canvas, 24 x 30
25
Wing on Wing, 2008, oil on canvas, 44 x 44
26
Flores, 2009, oil on canvas, 30 x 30
27
Waiting for Parts, 2008, oil on canvas, 20 x 30
28
Small Tractors, w/Hannah Shook, 2008, oil on canvas, 20 x 24
29
Mushrooms, 2003, oil on canvas, 11 x 14
30
Mohave Morning, 2012, oil on canvas, 24 x 30
When she was not painting in New Mexico, Louisa enjoyed her ranch home and studio on thirteen acres about twenty miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. There she surrounded herself with gardens and an menagerie of farm animals reminiscent of her childhood growing up on a farm in New Hampshire’s Merrimack Valley. When she hits the road for places like the Grand Canyon, she is attracted to accuracy in drawing, but ultimately, the artwork is “as much about paint as the motif,” she stated, adding that the canyon complements the extremes she favors in everything she does. “The more extreme the conditions the more exciting it is - I love being on the edge of change.”
31
Mohave Afternoon, 2012, oil on canvas, 24 x 24
“The awe I feel for the magnificent and the mysterious manifestations of Creation is a complelling force in my work,” McElwain concluded. “I am a secular modernist stiving to balance the beauty of the paint with the beauty of the motif. I want to create paintings that gratify, nourish, empower and embrace the divine mysteries.” Louisa McElwain
Susan Hallsten McGarry | Art of the National Parks
32
Untitled, 1985, oil on canvas, 20 x 24
33
Above Burro Springs, 2011, oil on canvas, 20 x 30
34
35
Desert View, 2002 , oil on canvas, triptych, 14 x 14 each
36
Castle Rock, 2012, oil on canvas, 15 x 30
“A painting for me, is the sum of innumerable commitments to an idea made in a dance to the tempo of the evolving day. It is a kind of ‘captured choreography’ beheld in a single gaze.” Louisa McElwain
37
El Amanecer, 2005, oil on canvas, 54 x 84
38
Creek in Snow, 2005, oil on canvas, 12 x 36
39
40
Be Thou Strong My Habitation, 2012, oil on canvas, 48 x 72
41
My deepened relationship with a few beloved places continues to entice me to paint increasingly evanescent events of nature, to take greater leaps into larger canvases, surrendering to the inquiry; to paint with ever more trust and joy. I paint outdoors in all sorts of conditions, open to the impulse of the changing light, wind, heat, cold, insects, all forces of nature, to bring life and truth into my paintings as a form of worship and celebration of my connectedness to God. As a landscape painter, I am deeply involved in how I experience nature through my eyes, which God gave me in order that I may behold the glory of His creation. Relationships between colors, correctly understood, clearly seen and expressed fully, create light, atmosphere, weight and form, in space. My chosen tool for applying paint to canvas is the trowel, for two primary reasons: to curb my ability to describe objects, and to move paint with velocity, articulate delicacy, and sensuous impasto. I strive to allow the beauty of the paint, moved by the impulse of the Creator’s spirit, which flows through me, to say something honest, deep and true about my experience of nature, to make paintings that gratify the mind, nourish the soul, that He might be glorified.
42
Louisa McElwain
Enduring Grace, 2012, oil on canvas, 54 x 72
43
Life, 2012, oil on canvas, 34 x 64
44
First Snow, 1980, oil on canvas, 28 x 28
45
Galisteo Creek, 1985, oil on canvas, 14 x 18
46
Untitled (NM landscape), 1985, oil on canvas, 11x14
47
Untitled (NM landscape) 1985, oil on canvas, 22 x 28
48
Untitled 2 (NM landscape), 1985, oil on canvas, 22 x 28
49
Untitled (NM), 1986, oil on canvas, 18 x 24
50
Vail of Rain, 1992, oil on canvas, 32 x 32
51
Badlands, Silverlight, 1993, oil on canvas, 40 x 50
52
Autumn Cottonwoods, 1995, oil on canvas, 9.75 x 20
53
Arroyo Seco, 2004, oil on canvas, 54 x 54
54
Walking Rain Over Truchas, 2002, oil on canvas, 20 x 24
55
Hoodoos and High Clouds, 2004, oil on canvas, 30 x 30
56
Boulder Creek Draw, 2006, oil on canvas, 12 x 24
57
The Smiling of the River, 2006, oil on canvas, 24 x 20
58
Distant Thunder, 2007, oil on canvas, 30 x 40
59
Aspen Grove, (jemez), 2009, oil on canvas, 18 x 18
60
61
Shining Cliffs, Ghost Ranch, 2007, oil on canvas, 12 x 72
62
Palisade, 2012, oil on canvas, 24 x 30
Selected Museums + Collections
Philadelphia Zoological Society, PA
American Embassies: Sanaa, Bogota, Singapore, Bahrain
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
AT&T, CA
Rosewood Vineyards, CA
Coors Brewing Co., CO
San Juan College, NM
INA Corp., PA
St. Vincent Hospital, Santa Fe, NM
NATO Headquarters, Brussels
The Booth Museum, GA
Nokia, TX
Tucson Museum of Art, AZ
Peat Marwick, CA
University of Pennsylvania, PA
Pepsi-Cola, CA
63
University of Texas Law School, TX
photo by: Lindy Powers
64
Unremitting Grace, 2012, oil on canvas, 48 x 72
速