The Work of Walter Ufer

Oferta Para San Esquipula
Oil on Canvas
26x30
1916

Down a Hillside in Taos
Oil on Canvas
30x36
1917 

Where the Desert Meets the Mountain
Oil on Canvas
36.5x40.25
Before 1922

Across the Arroyo
Oil on Canvas
20.25x25.125
Unknown

Yellow and Blue
Oil on Canvas
25.124x25
Unknown

Abigayle Goldstein

8/25/17

Painting 1

Molly Zimmer

Walter Ufer was a German-American born in Kentucky who began his career in the fine arts as a young boy apprenticed to a lithographer. Over the course of his young adult life, he went to multiple art schools and toured Europe with portraits that were described as academic. The work Ufer became famous for didn’t come until later in his life when he was invited to tour Taos, which so captured him that it became the strict focus of the rest of his life’s work. At first he only spent his summers painting in Taos and still lived and worked on the east coast, but eventually he moved to Taos permanently and his style of painting changed with the scenery.

Ufer was formerly known for academic portraiture and work mostly done indoors with a darker palette, and though he often did sketches, he always painted with oils. When he moved to Taos, he was forced to lighten his oil palette in order to capture the landscapes, and he began to paint primarily outdoors. In keeping with his previous style, he liked to have a model, which tended to be American Indians that he captured in the landscape. He would set up his easel outside with a dark cloth behind it to keep the sun from shining through the canvas and then use a pencil to capture the model and motif briefly before he took paint to the canvas. Ufer would paint from the top of the canvas to the bottom, using dark blues to set in a base and shadows before taking the lighter colors in so he could capture the brightness of the sky, mountain, buildings,  and mesas. Ufer’s habit was to paint one canvas in the morning and another in the afternoon with the same palette, and then wash his brushes thoroughly to be used the next day.

Works Cited

Walter Ufer: Sixteen Paintings. Christie, Manson & Woods International, 1982.

Nelson, Mary Carroll. “Walter Ufer.” The Legendary Artists of Taos, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1980, pp. 76–80.

“Walter Ufer.” SIRIS - Smithsonian Institution Research Information System, Smithsonian American Art Museum

First Week Collaborative Paintings

I am so proud of you all the collaborative painting you made. You are all now officially painters. Welcome to the community!

Here are images of all of your collaborative paintings!

URGENT! If you do not already have your kit, purchase these for Monday.

Hi Class.

So the update on the Painting kits is that the bookstore totally ran out and didn't tell me that they wouldn't be ordering enough to fulfill all 20 kits for the first day of class.

I  do want you to have at least these supplies for THIS MONDAY, so you will have to purchase locally at Artisans or Michaels. (Artisan's open on Saturday, and Michaels is open on Sunday, both open on Monday. 

Sketchbook (approximately 8” x 10” size)

I small Dawn Dish Soap Bottle

12” x 16” Oil Paint disposable paper palette

1 plastic container, approximately 12” x 16” with lid

1 package of metal palette knives ~3-5

Silicon Jar, or other mason jar you have until you can order it

2 Rolls of VIVA paper towels

small bottle of Gamsol

1 Pad of Canvas Paper 9” x 12”

1 Kit of Brushes (varied sizes) large to small

32oz of Gesso

1 box of Nitrile disposable gloves (fits you)

Cream colored Masking Tape (1” wide), not the artist or drafting kind, get cheapest

37 ml tubes-- WINTON, WINSOR AND NEWTON OIL COLORS

Titanium White (200ml)

Ultramarine Blue

Raw Sienna

Ivory Black

Payne’s Grey

18” x 24” Drawing board to adhere surfaces to

Clothes suitable for getting paint on

Close-toed Shoes

Black Vine Charcoal

Graphite Pencils

Hard Eraser

Small Hand Pencil Sharpener

      Plastic box to hold all paints in (your choice of size) or cardboard box

Ruler (at least 12” in length) plastic

X-Acto Knife

Combination lock for ART building lockers

Supply Outlets: (all closed on Sunday except Michael’s):

UNM Bookstore 277-0111

Artisan Santa Fe (10% student discount) 3017 Monte Vista Blvd NE   256-4540

Michael’s Arts and Crafts 4410 Wyoming Blvd NE 299-4007

                   11140 Lomas Blvd NE 271-4955

My Connection-Painting & Wood carvings

Hi I'm Jasmine,

I have a big connection to art through my family. My parents started doing chainsaw wood sculptures almost 20 years ago in California and develop their own style from there. Then we moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico, a tourist town where they continued their work and opened up a store that included wooden bear sculptures and many other animals or figures out of wood. They also taught all their siblings and some kept with it. the store grew to include merchandise like cedar furniture, Mexican Pottery, and metal art. 

I have been helping my parents and their business as early as i can remember, me and my sister would be able to paint the Bears or paint the signature wood necklaces that we hang around their necks. We were able to be creative and paint different signs or pieces for magnets on small wood slabs. From there I continue taking art classes to music classes because I was very interested in the different arts. After taking the art one in my hometown I knew I wanted to keep doing some kind of Art so when I transferred up here I decided to take a painting class and I'm looking forward to it the semester. 

My connection with painting.

             Hi everyone. My name is Anna. I have a weird connection with painting. The reason I say that is because I love painting, but I feel not adequate enough to say I'm a painter. I sadly am the only person who does art in my family. I was raised being told that I had to go to college to become a doctor or an accountant, but I never felt like that was for me. In high school, I started taking art classes and fell in love. I always loved drawing, because I knew I could always erase. I always got nervous with paint though because if you mess up, you can't take away paint. I normally do Disney characters on mini canvas. I love doing them, but I want to learn how to think outside the box and challenge myself with painting. I want to become as close to painting as I am with drawing.

My relationship with Painting

Hey everybody,

            My name is Shannon and I have liked painting since I was a child. There were many times that my sister and I would go outside and paint with watercolors or some kind of washable paint (we went outside to have fresh air and because we were less likely to make a huge mess that was hard to clean). My reason for liking painting has changed since I was younger, now it’s more because I like how the colors blend and how smooth painting can look.

            I really started getting into painting in high school because we tried different techniques in my first intro class, and I was better at blending colors and having things look the way I wanted with watercolor and acrylics more than I did with colored pencils or similar materials. I like making paintings with bright, saturated colors. I also like to paint things I’m interested in, which has mostly been space or people lately. I really like figuring out how to make cloud like shapes for the space pieces and I love how simple blending and shading a face or body is with paints.

My lack of relationship with painting...

I come from a very artistic family; a family of painters, drawers, writers, and musicians. I focus my artistic release into dance and photography, and while I have dabbled in most other forms of artistic expression, I have yet to create anything with paint and a brush. My mother is a painter, and painting was therefore the first art form I was ever exposed to. However, despite the fondness I feel toward the media, that fondness has always been overpowered by an overwhelming sense of intimidation. After years of putting it off, I decided to make an attempt to replace the intimidation with inspiration and to explore a way of expression that my mother holds a place for in her heart.

My Painting Connection

Olivia Simpson

Painting 1

M. Zimmer

August 22, 2017

My Painting Connection

   My Classmates,         

          For me, painting isn’t something that I can just do. I plan out, sketch and recreate what I paint in order for it to all come together in the end. I have loved art since I was younger, after watching my grandmother paint and draw for the five short years I knew her. Before her, my great grandmother was a wonderful painter who worked primarily in oils. I have at least 50 paintings in my house of hers that have always given me the inspiration I needed to carry on with my work. I have done a lot of watercolor, and acrylic works, but oil is something I have yet to conquer. It will be a new experience that excites me and drives me forward. Painting isn’t just randomly smudging paint on a canvas to me. It’s using a brush to create a picture how you want it to be seen. Everyone’s connection to painting is different, and it’s the same with mine. Although they can be similar no two are truly alike. 

Relationship to Painting | 8/23/17

Hello,

My name is Abby and I’ve been fascinated with art as a hobby all my life. I know that using the word “art” is very broad. I’ve experimented with collage, woodworking, and even crocheting, but for the most part, I just draw. I’ve explored many drawing mediums and tools and found that my favorite is micron pens and tiny sketchbooks. However, every time I get this fantastic vision of something I’d like to draw in my head, it’s in color. And I’ve found, time and time again, that when I try and add color in any form to a sketch, I ruin it. I have sketchbooks filled with ruined drawings and my attempts at watercolor, acrylics, and even pastels. I have even done paintings as projects for classes, supposing that since the paintings were a personal expression, I couldn’t be graded too harshly for utter failures of paintings as long as I showed I put in effort! I’d like to be able to put in effort and be pleased with the results. I am frustrated with this shortcoming in my own artistic endeavors, so I decided to take a painting class so that I could learn how to wield color more masterfully, or at least sufficiently. My relationship to painting is a strained one, but one I hope becomes more harmonious over the course of the semester. I am looking forward to learning and growing in skill beside you all!

Connection with Pianting

Morgan Y.

22 Aug 2017

ARTS 207

M. Zimmer

Connection with Painting

Painting was a style of art that exposed itself to me numerous times. Although, it never struck my interest until high school. I was exposed to its beauty more during my time at a small college near my hometown where I was fascinated by this painted scene of a desert with a storm cloud. The colors are what struck me the most for it seems very smooth and connected. It all seem to fit together. However, that wasn't the only painting in the college. Exploring all these fascinating sights and seeing different images really conveys certain messages to the viewer. I feel the connection through the labor. It shows creativity and care. The creativity the paint essentials hold makes any composition differ from reality by its texture, color, and placement. These tools help any artist create something wild. It has power, and anyone can wield it including me. I connect with paint through the possibilities of creation and style.

My Relationship to Painting

Hello Class,

To be honest, I don't really have much of a connection to painting. I've always appreciated the craft and I certainly have my favorite paintings and painters. The most painting I've done however has been to cover up the walls to my house.

Painting has always amazed me and I've always wanted to give it a try but I'll admit that it intimidates the crap out of me. I typically use Photography as my medium of choice so it excites me to get away from the mechanization of that craft and into the 'organic' world of painting. I don't expect anything stellar right away but just the thought of getting my hands dirty and expressing myself in a completely is going to be awesome!

I look forward to sharing art and ideas with all of you!

Your classmate,

Ryan

Artist Research List & Guidelines

Throughout the semester you will each be researching 2 artists from this list, and posting on the blog for others to comment. 

Research Artist Parameters

You will choose 2 artists from the List below, and write a 1 page detailed description of their painting style and process, and find 5 images for you to post on blog. You are required to utilize the UNM Fine Arts and Design Library for your research in combination with an online artist website or museum archive or magazine for your images.

Here are some reputable sources for images:
books in UNM Fine Arts Library
Artist websites (found by googling the artists name)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Guggenheim Museum
Worcester Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
Philadelphia Museum of Art
you get the idea...these days many museums have online archives

Archives with access through UNM Library System
JSTOR

Other Sources that could be useful:
easybib.com for citations
Art in America
you can also look at articles written on blogs for information on living artist's process on their work, please cite

Blogs and Website to Follow:

1. The Jealous Curator
2. Art Forum
3. Art 21 Blog
4. Art F City
5. The Bomb
6. Contemporary Art Daily
7. Two Coats of Paint
8. Painter’s Table: highlights writing from the painting blogosphere as it is published and serves as a platform for exploring blogs that focus primarily on the subject of painting.
9. HyperAllergic: reviews of contemporary art, with info about artists.
10. Juxtapoz: A beautiful website featuring emerging artists and illustrators.
11. Contemporary Daily Art: One of the most famous art blogs, offering a real dose of inspiration to art lovers.
12. Arrested Motion: Online magazine providing exclusive worldwide coverage of the low brow, urban and contemporary art scene on the daily.
13. We Heart: We Heart explores the intersections between arts and culture, and lifestyle, living and travel.
14. Beautiful/Decay: A former printed publication that now has an online home, sharing the same exciting content that made Beautiful/Decay a widely loved and revered creative bible.
15. My Modern Met: My Modern Met is where art enthusiasts and trend-spotters connect over creative ideas
16. Colossal: Colossal is a Webby-nominated blog that explores art and other aspects of visual culture. And it's bloomin' lovely.
17. Drawn: Still one of the biggest and best blogs to go to for illustration inspiration, Drawn is all the daily dose you'll need to be inspired by a whole range of different artwork.
18. IllustrationFriday: Illustration Friday is a weekly illustration challenge. A topic is posted every Friday and then participants have all week to come up with their own interpretation.
19. Brown Paper Bag: An interesting blog that celebrates beautiful illustration in creative and clever ways.
20. Hi-Fructose is a quarterly print art magazine,focuses squarely on the art which transcends genre and trend, assuring readers thorough coverage and content that is informative and original.
21. BOOOOM: It is Canada’s highest traffic art blog and an authoritative voice in the new contemporary arts scene, highlighting emerging talents, and launching the careers of many young artists internationally.

Requirements

1. Written component: please explore this artist and describe in your own words their style, what their typical subject matters is, how they paint, what kinds of materials they use, and what their process is. Please write 1 page max, 12pt font, double spaced, and post on blog. Please cite your book, website or online museum archive used with MLA format.

*Remember the focus of this research is not on biography or just dates, but how they paint and what aspects of their life influenced their style-- such as where they lived, what jobs they did, or even where the paintings were made (if like landscapes).

2. Works by Artist: choose 5 images of works that you like by the artist, or hate, or find perplexing. Please give titles and information on size and medium, if possible. This information will usually be listed next to image on reputable sources such as artist website, in a book, or magazine.

The typical format for work information is:
Title (italics)
medium used (can be one or multiple mediums)
size of work
date made

When it is your week, post are DUE to be posted on the blog by Monday at beginning of class. 

List of Artists

1. Pablo Picasso
2. Henri Matisse
3. Claude Monet
4. Paul Cezanne
5. Eduard Manet
6. Rembrandt
7. Peter Paul Reubens
8. Diego Velazquez
9. William Hogarth
10. Albrect Durer
11. Titian
12. Sandro Botticelli
13. Vincent Van Gogh
14. Grant Wood
15. Salvador Dali
16. James McNeil Whistler
17. Andy Warhol
18. Gustav Courbet
19. Paul Klee
20. Edgar Degas
21. Gerhard Richter
22. Egon Schiele
23. Marlene Dumas
24. Richard Siebenkorn
25. John Marin
26. Georgia O'Keeffe
27. Eric Fischl
28. Anselm Kiefer
29. Wangechi Mutu
30. Elizabeth Payton
31. James Rosenquist
32. Robert Rauschenberg
33. Jenny Saville
34. Wayne Thiebold
35. Peter Doig
36. Yoskay Yamamoto
37. Amy Sillman
38. Marsden Hartley
39. Joan Mitchel
40. Helen Frankenthaler
41. Nicolas de Stael
42. Jonathan Lasker
43. Lee Bontecou
44. Julie Mehretu
45. Phillip Taffe
46. Erin Lorre
47. Robert Motherwell
48. Wendy White
49. Charlene Von Heyl
50. Jules De Balincourt
51. Ellsworth Kelly
52. Halal Pozanti
53. David Schnell
54. Sarah Cain
55. Lisa Ruyter
56. Aiko Hachisuka
57. Alice Niel
58. Andy Goldsworthy
59. Carroll Dunham
60. Chris Ofilli
61. Dana Schutz
62. Gina Beavers
63. Henry Taylor
64. Joan Brown
65. Jon Wesley
66. Nicholas Krusher
67. Philip Evergood
68. Robert Kushner
69. Tala Madani
70. Wilhelm Sasnal
71. Alex Katz
72. Sangram Majumdar
73. Timothy App
74. Allison Miller
75. Berthe Moriset
76. Sonia Delaney
77. Elizabeth Murray
78. Elaine DeKooning
79. William DeKooning
80. Mary Cassat
81. Agnes Martin
82. Joan Miro
83. Jackson Pollock
84. Victor Higgins
85. Walter Ufer

Sign Up for Artist Research 

Week 2 (Posts DUE on 9/6) no class on Monday (Labor Day)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 3 (Posts DUE on 9/11)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 4 ( Posts DUE on 9/18)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 5 (Posts DUE on 9/25)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 6 (Posts DUE on 10/2)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 7 (Posts DUE on 10/9)

1. 

2.

3. 

FALL BREAK

Week 9  (Posts DUE on 10/23)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 10 (Posts DUE on 10/30)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 11 (Posts DUE on 11/6)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 12 (Posts DUE on 11/13)

1. 

2.

3. 

Week 13 (Posts DUE on 11/20)

1. 

2.

3. 

THANKSGIVING BREAK

Week 15 (Posts DUE on 12/4)

1. 

2.

3. 

Blog 1 - Relationship to Painting

Howdy everyone,

I have no idea what I'm doing in general, but I am pretty sure that I know why I'm interested in painting. I've always been a visualizer. During childhood, I kept to myself due to shyness. Drawing was something I could do by myself and use as a ploy to look busy. As grade school progressed, so did my drawing. Everyone's brain developed their own need to be understood and as a result of my habits, using under-practiced words was not a good way to communicate. I didn't know how to talk to people and I had little experience with writing because I practiced art instead. It was much easier showing people my thoughts than describing them. 

During late high school, I started finding myself. Comfortable enough to leave my comfort zone, I started painting with acrylic. This turned out to be a great decision! Just as a termite uses wood to regurgitate building material, I use paint to regurgitate parts of myself. The more a termite "puts out there" the closer it will get to perfecting a mound. The more I practice, the closer I can get to completing my own visions. 

In this class, I'm hoping to gain experience through projects.There's a certain amount of pressure that's necessary for me to create anything and a college class is a perfect dealer for pressure. I'm looking forward to honing in on my aesthetics and technical skill. I'm very excited to learn oil painting and hope we can all help each other out. 

Relationship to Painting

Hello,

My name is Me'a Townsend and I have an interesting relationship with painting; it's like a flirtatious on again, off again, sort of relationship. So, with this class, I guess it's on again.

For me, I've been painting in many different ways, focusing most on theatrical productions. Using just house paint to make textures look like realistic woodgrain, brick and mortar, stained glass, marble, almost anything you can think of -- if described right and with enough time, I was the gal to see.

Of course, I dabbled in traditional painting methods, acrylic and watercolor (watercolor being my favorite, or treating acrylic like watercolor).
I always end up going back to nontraditional painting though. Cake decorating, body painting, sfx makeup -- using airbrushes and latex, and incorporating techniques of brush work and etc.

I think the best part of painting was working as a T.A. for an elementary art teacher. I'm not the biggest fan of people, but kids give me hope for humanity, especially when they make art.

Blog 1-Relationship to Painting

Hello Classmates!

I would say that I have a tentatively strained relationship with painting. I have painted with a variety of different paints, and I much prefer acrylic and oils. I have never been very fond of painting unless I was painting on a large scale. The largest painting that I did was a 4'x6', to-scale, rendition of the Space Shuttle Atlantis at its last take off. After I did that painting I never wanted to paint below 18"x24" ever again! One of my favorite parts of painting is the level of realism that you can get from the process. Yet I find that I don't exactly enjoy painting for class since I like to take longer than I should on paintings. I always feel so much more rushed when I’m painting compared to when I’m using any other media. I haven’t figured out why that is, but as a result I’ve noticed I don’t like painting very much. I can get lost painting, searching for something inside myself, but always find that I just don’t have the passion for painting like I do for other media. I’m hoping that this class will help me find whatever it is that I’ve been missing, and maybe make me like painting more than I do at this point.

Aug23 blog 1

Painting I blog/Aug23

Dear Class,

       My relationship with painting hasn’t always been stellar. I was often told growing up that I couldn’t paint what I wanted too. I was told that my paintings scared people or showed that I was somehow disturbing. The truth is I often channel my emotions into what I paint, depicting things I experienced, hardships I endured or sometimes emotions that I only express through art. As I grew up and moved away, I realized that a lot of the people I knew where very narrow minded and did not know much about art, or the expression of art. I felt that many people back at home where grey and blank canvasses who only saw the world in black and white. This was very difficult, but as I’ve gotten older it was a relief to know that I was not the only one who wanted to make a living off of doing what they loved, and expressing themselves through that medium.

     Painting has always been part of my life, one of my earliest memories is learning to finger-paint in kindergarten. We had to finger-paint fall colors, and one of my classmates noticed that when we smashed to two halves of the painting together, the result looked the tops of trees (in fall) from atop of a plane. Looking at that smashed painting and watching how it changed, fascinated me and spurred in me a lifelong curiosity about painting. Today my main interest is digital painting, I especially love fantasy landscapes and impressionist paintings.  I spend a lot of my time on deviantart.com; I like looking at paintings particularly those made in the actual medium of paint, these are some of my favorites to comment about and analyze. This year I hope to improve my portfolio and I believe that this is one of the classes to do it in.  It is my goal to eventually pursue my Masters here at UNM and excel at the arts. I'm looking forward to taking this class and I aim to do well in school. I hope you all have a great day and I will see you next class period.                                                  

                                                                                                                                                Angel