Painting up a storm: New Mexico Art League delivers the skies with 'Force of Nature'

Sep. 18—When storms churn across the New Mexico landscape, they have long served as eye candy for local artists.

Open at the New Mexico Art League, "Force of Nature" gathers the interpretations of 43 artists through 92 works revealing the strength and beauty of those skyscapes. The show is open through Oct. 7.

Retired emergency doctor Mick Leo's "Lingering Light I" takes an abstracted approach to those striations of sky, land and light.

"I don't work directly from photographs of any kind," he said. "I do it more from memory or image-making. I'm working with the free flow of the watercolor. The images evolve in a more intuitive way. It's a semi-abstract image that people can read," he added.

Leo has worked in watercolor for more than 20 years, learning largely on his own, with the help of some workshops and mentors.

"I also work in acrylics and mixed-media," he said. "Watercolor is just something I've been interested in. It's a more challenging water medium than anything else. Watercolor kind of does what it wants."

The exhibit marks his Art League debut.

Robert Wilson's watercolor "Summer Storm" features thundering clouds roiling across the fields.

"It's one of those New Mexico scenes that stuck in my head," he said. "It's a matter of putting down the wash and letting go of it."

A retired sports medicine physician from New Mexico Orthopedics, Wilson has long dabbled in art. Today, he considers himself a professional artist.

"I was always more interested in doing art at the time, but being a doctor was my job," he explained.

The exhibit is Wilson's first Art League show. He does very little preparatory sketching.

"I want to find my horizon. I want to find basic shapes. All the detail stuff is unsketched. It's like studying for medical school."

He works both from photos and in plein air (the outdoors).

Edgewood oil painter Roger Gathman was driving along U.S. 550 when he spotted some red cliffs beneath an approaching storm. The image became "Monsoon Season."

"There's an area up there that has some beautiful, beautiful cliffs," he said. "I went up there to do some photography for ideas for paintings. There were big storm clouds building up."

Now retired after teaching art at Albuquerque Academy for 42 years, Gathman originally tried majoring in biology before stumbling over the math. A neighbor who taught at the academy encouraged him to try art education. A sabbatical from Academy introduced him to the painter Wilson Hurley.

"I think I learned more in six months from him than all the time I was in school," Gathman said. "He treated me like a colleague. That's where some of my cloud stuff comes."

A regular in Art League shows, Gathman begins by blocking out the shapes on his canvas.

"I'm somewhere between Impressionism and realism," he said. "I don't know if it's really a style."

Initially reluctant to venture into oils, a teacher exchange in London opened the artist to its possibilities. He walked into a Paris museum gallery filled with works by Claude Monet.

"I went, 'Oh my God, I want to paint like that.' "

At the time, he had been working in watercolor and drawing. The teacher looked at his work and told him, " 'You draw very well, Roger, but you're a painter,' " Gathman said. "That was all I needed. I jumped into oil painting and never looked back."

Founded in 1929, the New Mexico Art League is an art school and gallery, and a nonprofit association.