Peppers Art Reception Show, Magdalena, New Mexico

Better late than never, the saying goes. My fifth annual show during Old Timers, at Peppers, July 12-13, went very well. It is always nice to see old friends and family. Saturday was the reception from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. and Sunday I was scheduled to paint from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. I think I ended up staying and painting until 4:00 p.m. Paintings were sold, door prize was won and as they say, a good time was had by all.


As usual, I didn't get a photo of the wall when we put up the paintings. I sold some paintings, so these photos are later in the evening with old paintings from last year filling in the blank spaces. Sunday we took down a few of the old ones and rearranged the walls. Guess what? No photo.

There were many people at the reception on Saturday. We served cheese and wine with an assortment of soft drinks and cookies. Most of the visitors signed up for a doorprize.

My plan was to paint the door prize on Sunday as a demo in acrylics and then Gene would stick on the frame and we would draw for a winner. We got to Peppers on Sunday and it was raining pretty hard. We put the food and my painting gear under a tent and prepared to paint. We needed jackets in the cool weather.

We decided to take the food inside, but plein air painting requires putting up with rain and cold so I started to paint. Lilly, my young painter friend, was going to paint as well. I had not put gesso on the Masonite panels thinking I would show how to do that and it would be dry in 5 or 10 minutes in this dry climate. It took about 45 minutes to dry sufficiently to paint on.

Peppers in the fog.

I started painting the hills to the north with the trees nearby for my work. It was pretty foggy and you could not see the more distant hills. I had a couple of people brave enough to stay and watch. About 1:00 p.m. it cleared up, jackets came off and I finished the painting.

The start of the door prize. 8 x 10 acrylic on wooden panel. Looks a little like a beach in this photo, eh?

The finish of the painting. I left the background in both photos so you get a glimpse of what I was painting. The winner of this painting was Bertie Gwin. She was our bookkeeping, typing teacher in high school so that was nice.

There were still folks around when I finished the acrylic painting, so I started a pastel painting.

Peppers Tree, pastel 8 x 10 inches on Pastelbord.

I didn't quite get the pastel finished. Gene put it in a frame and I traded it with Robin Baker, a one stroke painter from San Antonio, New Mexico, for a welcome sign painted with flowers.

Lilly painted the Peppers building and the plants outside. She is becoming quite the artist. She has won a prize at the Socorro County Fair two years in a row.

I painted this of Lilly a couple of years ago at Peppers. She is about 9 this year.