Sketching in Taos

When I first moved to Colorado, my husband and I visited many pueblos and we collected pots made by the various Indian tribes.  We enjoyed meeting the artists and talking about their life and their craft.  

But the thing we also loved was seeing the architecture of the villages we visited.  As as New Yorker, I was shocked to see that apartment living as not invented in Manhattan!  

During a recent visit to Taos, NM, I had a chance to go to the Taos Pueblo. This Pueblo was one of the most beautiful I have ever visited.  It is the oldest continuously inhabited place in the Americas.  Wow.  I brought home some dirt in a small bottle to continue to connect me to this very spiritual place.  It will reside in my studio to remind me of the muted browns (dirt), tans (buildings), reds (dried peppers) and blues (paint and sky) of this environment.  This palette will probably appear in my future work.  

One of the joys of traveling is to see and collect different color palates.  It's amazing how they change from place to place.  Next time you travel to a distant place, bring along your set of watercolors and make a palette of that place for future reference and to remind you of your visit.  Wouldn't it be fun to have a page in your journal just consisting of color palettes for each month of your year?  Hmmmm.  I think I'll do just that in 2017!