Santa Fe
When I was sixteen I went to Santa Fe with my family during a thanksgiving trip to New Mexico to visit relatives who lived in Farmington. I kept to myself except for comic relief and threats of violence and read Emerson’s Self Reliance in the back of the family van; a big Dodge two tone full of kids and sandwiches and three eight tracks to listen to: The Carpenters Greatest Hits, Sergeant Pepper, and Three Dog Night. I don’t remember what album. I love them all still but can take only so much.
My parents were not into music. They were into Jesus, mom, and Zig Ziglar, dad. I was the oldest. I was into Emerson, punk rock, Dylan, E.E. Cummings, zen, and art. I was excited to go to Santa Fe.
It was my grandfather’s idea and he insisted we go. He was a mystic cowboy who’d been a flat footed boxer and Harley Davidson demo rider in his twenties. His flat feet kept him out of the war. After my beautiful and eccentric grandmother died he married a rich widow who was a western watercolor artist. She was a sensitive painter with good taste who recognized my interests and facilities. She typed up a freestyle report I’d written spontaneously when I was ten about my thoughts on Montana where she, Jean, and Bob Holladay made their home. It had rained in Virginia City part of the time we’d been on a tourist flatboat kind of thing and I’d written that over rain and lightning I preferred “sun and shine”.
This early use of alliteration impressed Jean and she encouraged me to keep writing by simply laughing and making a typed version of my effort. When I saw how my words looked on the page I knew I was good at something it was unusual for a kid to be good at.
That’s all it takes. Notice a kid and you show him what’s possible. She did. And now my grandfather was finishing the job by getting me to Santa Fe.
We ate lunch at the Shed. It was the best meal of my life and the first taste of something I knew was good for my soul because it came from a new and sacred place.
Someplace I wanted to be.
After lunch I took off.
I wandered the galleries and the back patios of galleries. I walked down by the riverbed next to canyon road. The galleries and the art intimidated me. But when I saw the ash trays and empty wine bottles and wooden crates left over from the pre holiday openings I knew this was the life I wanted. “The art life”.
The family had been looking for me.
Where have you been?!
I’ve been to Santa fucking Fe! Listen dad, I’ve got a bunch of job applications and I want you guys to go back to Salt Lake without me. Just loan me a thousand bucks and I’ll figure this out. I’m going to stay here and become an artist.
Get in the car. It was a huge prison van but he said car. After some pleading I got in and watched myself wave goodbye from the square, holding five job applications from bookstores and coffee shops and restaurants. I can see myself clearly, standing there in a Levi’s denim jacket (which I still have), an olive green sweater, jeans and engineer boots, a silver Navajo feather hanging from my ear. Only my body was in the van.
When I got home I started writing and drawing more. I quit smoking pot and cigarettes. I also quit the exceptionally good punk rock band I’d started and was lead vocalist for. We had practiced all summer before opening for the seminal Canadian band DOA at the Indian walk in center in Salt Lake City. The Stench was a great band and they toured Europe without me three times before admitting defeat. They influenced Greenday. But I had to quit. I’d found something I wanted more.
I started trying in school because now I had a plan. Go to college, become a professional artist, go to Santa Fe.
I didn’t make it back till 2003 when I got into a group show at the Klaudia Marr Gallery on Canyon Road. One of my paintings sold. Chuck Close was in the show. But more importantly I saw the paintings of the three artists who would become my mentors and main influences. Michael Scott, Malcolm Rains, and William Shepherd.
The magic and wild hearted genius of Michael Scott’s large scale paintings, alla Buffalo Bulb era were up at the Gerald Peters Gallery. I stood before them spellbound, charmed, laughing.
Malcom Rains classical series at the Meyer Gallery felt holy in the chiaroscuro of their zen light. Minimalist asymmetric paper pillars. Zurbaran goes to Japan.
The paintings of William Shepard were illusionistic wonders blending traditional and contemporary traditions. His pictures are the most Santa Fe of any I’ve seen. What I mean is that he blends native and western artifacts with seemingly kitsch Santa Fe thrift store finds and elevates them composing visual spells that smell like chilies and wool and nails and rain on adobe and piñon. I forget the name of the gallery but the gallerist gave me the photos from the show to take home. I still have them.
I contacted all three of these artists and two of them became friends and mentors. All of them were generous and gracious and kind.
So I found my way to Santa Fe. I don’t live there. Maybe someday. I feel at home in Utah. I ski and I have children here. I work without knocks on the studio door, without next door artists to critique my paintings. I like it that way. I text artist friends images if I want help. I’m grateful they are there for me.
So that’s my story. And it continues this September at Blue Rain Gallery with a new body of work based on but not limited to my western toy paintings. Cut paper paintings and other surprising set ups yet to be revealed. I hope to see you there in the fall among Piñon and chilies and magical light. After the crowds of summer and before the snow. It couldn’t be better timing. Plus it’s my birth month. What a gift.
I’d like to thank Leroy Garcia for visiting my Salt Lake home and studio back in 2014 and inviting me to show with Blue Rain and for his friendship and encouragement. Michael Scott for believing in me and suggesting I contact Leroy. And Malcolm Rains for his beautiful paintings and discussions about investments of time and physical and intellectual rigor in art.
And of course the late Bill Shepherd for liking what I like and exalting
the singularly ordinary treasures of Santa Fe.
-Brad Overton, 2025
