The Brushstrokes of Taos: Culture, Identity, and a Slight Panic Over Mixing the Right Green

The thing about painting in Taos is that you’re never alone. Even if you manage to find a quiet stretch of sagebrush where no tourists are taking selfies, the history of the place sits next to you like an uninvited but well-dressed dinner guest. It lingers in the air, like the scent of piñon smoke, quietly judging your color choices.

Take this portrait, for example. A woman, dignified and unbothered, stares past you—not quite daring you to look away, but making sure you understand that she sees you first. The colors—bold ochres, deep violets, the turquoise that everyone insists must be in a painting of the Southwest—aren’t just choices; they’re negotiations. You’re painting a person, but you’re also painting a culture, a landscape, a history that predates your need to document it.

Taos has this habit of making you hyper-aware of the tightrope you’re walking between reverence and appropriation. The Indigenous presence isn’t a backdrop; it’s the throughline. And if you mess up the tone of the skin or the way the fabric folds over a shoulder, it’s not just a mistake—it’s a failure to listen.

I used to think painting was about control. Get the proportions right. Nail the values. Make sure the eyes aren’t fighting each other like two angry chihuahuas. But the more I paint here, the more I realize it’s about surrender. The land, the people, the centuries of storytelling—they don’t need you to capture them. They just need you to show up, hold the brush, and get out of the way.

The painting—this painting—sits somewhere between impressionistic and deeply personal, between the past and the present. It’s about Taos in the way that all good paintings of Taos are: specific yet universal, intimate yet uncontainable. And if I had to do it over again? I’d probably mix a slightly different green. But then again, Taos would probably change it on me before I had the chance.