36 WWW.SOUTHWESTART.COM • AUGUST 2019
PaulaDevereaux,PiedraLumbre,oil,9 x 12.
Bettina Steinke Studio Group
AbiquiuInn,August1-31
SHOW PREVIEW
Abiquiu, NM
DISCERNING collectors of western
art prize the works of the late artist and
illustrator Bettina Steinke (1913-1999) for
her lifelike images that captured subjects
as diverse as U.S. presidents, Hollywood
stars, captains of industry, and pueblo
dancers. She and her husband, photog-
rapher Don Blair, moved west from New
York in 1955, fi rst settling in Taos and lat-
er in Santa Fe. There she mentored local
artists, including noted western painter
Ned Jacob, in the studio of her adobe
home on the south side of town.
Jacob, in turn, continued mentoring
artists in Steinke’s old studio, includ-
ing painters Dave Ballew and Bill Gal-
len. Then, three years ago, Gallen invited
seven of his own students—already ac-
complished professional artists in their
own right—to gather about once a month
in that venerable studio to paint together
and critique each other’s work as the Bet-
tina Steinke Studio Group. Now, for the
fi rst time, some 40 paintings from these
seven artists are exhibited together in the
upstairs gallery at the Abiquiu Inn in a
show entitled Seven Visions of the West.
All of the painters—Nancy J. Davis, Paula
Devereaux, Ann Jenemann, Lee Mac-
Leod, Cecilia Robertson, K. Shway, and
Marcia Williams—attend the show’s re-
ception on Saturday, August 3, from 4 to 7
p.m., and throughout the month, several of
them can be found working at their easels
en plein air on the grounds of the hotel.
Considering that the inn is a mere
13 miles from the famed Ghost Ranch,
where Georgia O’Keeffe lived and
worked, it’s an auspicious location for
the group’s public debut. “We all im-
mensely appreciate being able to walk
out into the New Mexico landscape and
express our responses to it in paint,”
says Santa Fe-based Cecilia Robertson,
whose richly colored landscapes aim to
capture “the immediacy of some moment
I’ve seen, whether an animal walking
across a canyon rim, or the light hitting
a mesa in a certain way.” With like-Ann Jenemann, Two Pillars, oil, 18 x 24.