(Three Trees)

Betty Bierne Parsons

Artist, curator, and gallery director Betty Parsons began her career in the artworld as a painter, and though her life took a new, more administrative course in the late 1930s when she began working for Mary Quinn Sullivan’s gallery - eventually helming her own - she never stopped working as an artist.

In the early 1940s her paintings began to evolve from the classic, representational themes in an Impressionist style that she’d been trained in to a more Expressionist feel, influenced no doubt by the rise of edgier, non-representational American genres. She began to abandon highly detailed composition, focusing instead on simplified shapes and rich tonality to capture the essence of her subjects.

In this untitled watercolor, three slender trees sprout from an arid desert landscape, perched on the edge of a cliff with a saturated cerulean sky rising behind them. Nothing is lost when Parsons attempts to capture a peaceful landscape without fuss or grandeur.

This was from the collection of Eleanor Bedell of Santa Fe who owned the "Trash and Treasures" shop on Palace Avenue and the "Native Market".