Taos Pueblo has occupied a special place in my life and imagination for more than four decades.

I lived in Taos, New Mexico, from 1986 to 1994, where I owned the Laughing Horse Inn and Southwest Moccasin & Drum. The latter bordered Pueblo lands, making the Pueblo and its surrounding landscape a familiar part of my everyday world. Even today, a trip to Taos rarely feels complete without returning to this extraordinary place.

For this digital painting, I began with a 1936 photograph of Taos Pueblo by American photographer Arthur Rothstein, created during his work for the Farm Security Administration. Rather than simply colorizing the historic photograph, I used it as the architectural foundation (i.e., the bottom layer in PhotoShop) for a new interpretation influenced by the restrained palette and haunting realism I admire in the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.

I rendered the Pueblo's adobe walls in ochres, umbers and weathered earth tones, contrasted against the cool grays and muted blues of Taos Mountain and a restless Northern New Mexico sky. Ladders, vigas, hornos and darkened doorways provide traces of human presence without requiring figures.

I did, however, make one distinctly personal addition: the dog wandering across the foreground. Anyone who has spent much time at Taos Pueblo knows that dogs have long seemed to be everywhere—wandering, sleeping, investigating and generally going about their business. Adding one transformed the historic scene for me from an archival image into something closer to a remembered moment.

The result is both homage and memory: a contemporary digital painting rooted in a historic photograph, a remarkable place, and eight years of my own life in Taos.

• Digital painting based on a public-domain historical photograph
• Available on watercolor paper, wood panel, metal panel and gallery-wrapped canvas
• Available in multiple sizes up to 40 × 50 inches
  
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