Connie Falk
Placitas, NM
Defined by Water
Oil
30” x 24” x 2”
2019
$650
About
I began taking drawing and painting classes in 2004 at New Mexico State University, until 2013, when I retired as a professor of agricultural economics. My primary influences as a beginning painter were my NMSU teachers, primarily Craig Culley, and a painter friend in Las Cruces, Bonnie Mandoe. Since moving from Las Cruces, first to Farmington, and then to Placitas, where I now live, I have participated in numerous shows and won a few accolades. For example, I was an invited guest artist for two months in 2022 at the Art Mozaik Galery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, NM. My painting, “Embudo Trail” won the Wilson Hurley Enchantment prize in March 2022 at Masterworks of NM. I was included in Southwest Art Magazine’s, “10 NM Painters to Watch” in fall 2021. I was juried into ArtsThrive at the Albuquerque Museum annual fundraiser in 2020. I have been invited twice to participate in the NM Cancer Center quarterly Gallery with A Cause Show. In 2014, the San Juan County and the Eleventh Judicial District Court purchased one of my paintings for permanent display in the courthouse in Aztec, NM.
Artist Statement
I focus a lot of my work on plein air painting as I am a member of a weekly group that paints together. I enjoy that comraderie and getting outside to see the nuances of the landscape and the light. I do love painting the landscape, and I’m especially inspired by the Sandias which I live close to in Placitas. I have painted many scenes of local hikes that I have extensively explored. However, I also have a body of work that is non-representational and is inspired by my pure love of color, line, shape, movement, and balance. I find abstract work pushes forward my landscape work and the opposite is also true. I paint primarily in oils but also experiment with acrylics and cold wax mixed with oils.
