Mesas, New Mexico, Along the Rio Grande

Cady Wells produced numerous landscapes of northern New Mexico in 1933 as a means of honing his talents. In these watercolors, he attempted to capture the essence of nature using an economy of line and color. He looked to his mentor Andrew Dasburg for inspiration and also attempted to digest the influence of John Marin, who had visited Taos in 1929 and 1930 and left a lasting example. The line of mesas in this watercolor establish an emphatic horizon, creating a point of stability in contrast to the expressive handling of line in the clouds and foreground.