BARBARA MEIKLE
Located in the heart of Santa Fe’s historic Canyon Road, Barbara Meikle Fine Art is home to the work of painter and sculptor Barbara Meikle. It’s where the artist keeps focus amid a busy career. In the end, it all comes down to the animals, which she loves.
“I like to say that I have the opposite of writer’s block—i have too many things that I want to paint and sculpt! Horses, burros, birds, bears…it depends on what I have recently experienced. A trip to Alaska to paint and photograph grizzlies, traveling to shows in Arizona and finding owls in the cacti, or the pure pleasure of watching a donkey roll in the spring dirt to scratch that winter coat off his back—they all inspire me,” she says. “Color is always one of my trademarks, as I use it in an emotional sense. The bright red brings joy, the brilliant turquoise can be awe-inspiring, the warm yellow gives a sense of peace and contentment. These are things I think about when I pick up my brush or palette knife, and it’s often layers of those colors that build up the texture in my paintings and the variety in my bronze patinas.”
Meikle also cherishes her location in Santa Fe, and within the larger Southwest. “Living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a definite plus for me,” she says. “We have such beautiful and dramatic mountains to the east and west, and an ever-changing sky that helps me think of color in new ways. As the layers build up on the canvas they are filled with the colors of the canyons, the mesas, the sagebrush and the pinon that surrounds me.”
The artist has work now on view at Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West at Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona, and also at the Women Artists of the West show at the Phippen Museum in Prescott, Arizona. She will next be painting for the 21st Annual Telluride Plein Air Festival from June 30 to July 6 in Telluride, Colorado.