John De Puy Original Oil on Canvas Needles District Utah 2010

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"Needles District" Utah, an exceptional, large Abstract Expressionist original oil on canvas painting by Taos Modernist artist, John De Puy, 2010

Ex: John and Isabel De Puy Collection, Taos, NM

To use a Modern Art world analogy, John De Puy (1927-2023) was the Clyfford Still (1904-1980) of the American Southwest, a brilliantly talented and inspired Modernist artist who for the great majority of his career made no particular effort to sell his paintings. Like Still, De Puy painted for the pure love of it, for expressing himself and only himself, not for any kind of applause or marketplace success. The result is a purity of expression that is simply very difficult to find anywhere in the art world. The vast majority of John De Puy’s paintings, like this one, are pure and powerful expressions of a pure and powerful landscape, his lifelong chosen home, the desert Southwest.

The subject of this particular painting, the “Needles District” in what is now Canyonlands National Park in Southeast Utah was a place and subject very dear to John’s heart, a harsh and unforgiving landscape he regularly hiked into, slept out in and explored intimately for decades often in the company of his best friend, the renowned Southwestern writer, Edward Abbey whose eloquent quotation about John’s work below is especially appropriate to a discussion of this painting. There is a powerful reality apparent beneath the veneer of visible reality in this landscape, we have been there many times ourselves and we have felt the power, the mystery, the strange and inspiring beauty, the awe and the raw primal fear John has shown here, all of which John has captured and expressed perfectly in this painting.

The tight, compressed, saturated color palette and the thick, heavily impastoed or layered application of the paint itself also serves to powerfully capture, express and communicate the strength and intensity of the image.

At left, John De Puy discussing this painting at his exhibition opening at The Harwood Museum, Taos, NM, February, 2016.

At right, The Harwood Museum exhibition catalog, a copy of which will be included with the purchase of this painting.

Left photo source and © Fine Arts of the Southwest, Inc.

“The land is my root and my being. Everything I am is the land and I spent 50 years interpreting it in painting and fighting lost causes.”

-Excerpted from “An Interview with John De Puy”

in “The Canyon Country Zephyr”, 2001

“John De Puy, Painter of the Apocalyptic Volcano of the World” exhibition at The Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico, February 13-May 1, 2016.

Photo source and © Fine Arts of the Southwest, Inc.

“A De Puy landscape is not the landscape we see with routine eyes or can record by camera. He paints a hallucinated, magical, sometimes fearsome world—not the world that we think we see, but the one, he declares, that is really there. A world of terror as well as beauty—the terrible beauty that lies beyond the ordinary limits of human experience, that forms the basis of experience, the ground of being”

—Edward Abbey, “Down The River”, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1982

Above left, view of "The Needles" in Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

Above left photo source and © action tour guide

The painting’s canvas measures a very good-sized 36" by 48". The framed dimensions are just slightly larger, 36 3/4" by 48 3/4". The painting is beautifully and appropriately framed in a plain blond wood slat frame hand made by John’s wife, and fellow artist, Isabel Ferreira-De Puy. The painting is properly signed, titled and dated on the verso as follows:

"De Puy "Needles District" ’10". The painting is in completely excellent original condition and has only had two very short and very careful journeys over the course of its 14 year life.

In 2016, It was taken directly from John De Puy’s home and painting studio outside Taos, New Mexico where it had been hanging for the first six years of its life since he finished it over his painting easel as one of his favorite of his pieces as he explained to us, to The Harwood Foundation Museum in Taos where it was exhibited as part of a major John De Puy retrospective exhibition entitled “John de Puy, painter of the Apocalyptic volcano of the World” a title previously bestowed on John by his friend, writer Edward Abbey.

During the exhibition’s opening, we asked John again for maybe the fourth or fifth time if he would be willing to sell the painting to us and this time he said “yes” so at the close of the exhibition in May 2016 the Harwood Museum’s Exhibition curator and we loaded the painting into our vehicle and brought it to our Santa Fe home and office where

it has hung ever since.

This, quite simply put, is a remarkable painting of a remarkable place by a remarkable artist. It has been an honor

and a privilege to have owned it for the past eight years and it should be just like that for its next fortunate owner.

Provenance:

The Artist, Taos, NM, 2010-2016

Fine Arts of the Southwest, Santa Fe, NM 2016-present

Exhibition History:

“John De Puy, Painter of the Apocalyptic Volcano of the World”

Harwood Foundation Museum retrospective exhibition, Taos, NM, February-May, 2016

SOLD

John De Puy told us that this painting was one of his favorite "children" and he hung it over his painting easel in his studio outside Taos, NM for six years where he could look at it everyday as he worked. This photograph of John at work with the painting hanging in front of him was taken by John's wife and fellow artist, Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, and given to us when we purchased the painting from them. This framed original photograph will be included along with the purchase of the painting.