Don Brackett

1932 - 0000

Don Brackett, a third-generation New Mexican, grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "My love of art has been my motivation for as long as I can remember. From the first grade in school, I can recall drawing and coloring.” Brackett went on to attend the University of New Mexico as a Fine Arts major, but as he says, “I struggled to make passing grades in all my other classes. I just wasn't interested in anything but drawing and painting."

For 15 years Brackett traveled northern New Mexico with his wife and fellow painter P. J. Garoutte in what they called their “paintmobile,” painting landscapes in watercolor. Brackett says he has been “fascinated with the shapes of the old adobe structures, the beautiful mountains and streams, especially here in our home in Taos. The pueblos along the Rio Grande have also been exciting and different painting subjects." Though his earlier paintings were watercolor and he even served as the president of the New Mexico Watercolor Society, by his late forties Bracket shifted to painting in oil, preferring the texture of the oil paint.

For many years Brackett preferred painting plein-aire and would often spend the entire day painting outside, afterward refining his work in his Taos studio. However, these days Brackett prefers to work from his studio. “So much of our lives have been spent traveling, but in recent years we’ve been content to stay close to Taos because it speaks to us so strongly. There’s endless inspiration in the views from our own studio windows,” he says.

He paints in an impressionist style and is a member of the Society of American Impressionists, though more recently he has painted with a palette knife, producing a much more pronounced impasto, and has even veered off into some completely abstract work. “I am not simply a reporter – most anyone can do that,” Brackett says. “Using a palette knife in my paintings is a new, exciting adventure achieved in context with my brushwork.”

Don Brackett and P. J. Garoutte recently co-authored the double-sided book, A Lifetime in New Mexico/Passion in Paint.

Of his life-long love of art and painting plein-aire, Brackett says, “After a while it just gets in your blood.” And, that he has, “…never grown tired of the subjects. I didn't choose this mysterious calling, it chose me and I would gladly do it all over again."

EARTH AND SKY Oil on Canvas 24 x 30 inches