Painted with thick oil paint and palette knives, I wanted to capture the craggy mountains and dense sage brush indicative of the unique New Mexico landscape.

On our last trip to New Mexico, we pulled over to photograph and paint this magnificent river gorge below. The clouds and light were just beautiful and I loved the contrast between the sun’s orange cast on the rock formations, the blue sky above and the deep purple hues on the distant hills and dramatic shadows. The two rivers converging created a perfect flowing composition, while the foreground rocks and scrub brush nicely anchored the corners of the painting. After being in Dallas surrounded by buildings and concrete, I just love getting to New Mexico with its vast open spaces, gorgeous skies and wild natural landscape, and I hope I can share those feelings with you in “Convergence.”

My husband and I have been teaching painting and photography workshops in Italy for the last four years, but since we love New Mexico so much, we decided to share our enthusiasm with our students and stay a little closer to home by teaching a week-long workshop in Santa Fe this August.