DEUX VIES
John De Puy & Isabel Ferreira-De Puy
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy and John De Puy in Southern Utah, 1997
Opening Reception: June 12th, 2022, 3 - 5pm Exhibition Dates: June 12th - August 30th, 2022
TCA Encore Gallery 133 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte Ta o s , N M 8 7 5 7 1 575.758.2052
INTRODUCTION For 25 years, the two lives of John De Puy and Isabel Ferreira-De Puy have been intertwined in a creative, romantic relationship portrayed throughout this collection. While they share the desert Southwest as the inspiration behind their vivid colors and form, they continue to express their individual spirits, from mythical to mystical. Despite the generational difference separating these two artists, the individual stories shared in their respective works, displayed at the TCA Encore Gallery, create a larger conversation when paired together, as these oil works on canvas and paper depict juxtaposed views of a shared subject. With rare, never-exhibited pieces by John and newer creations by Isabel, this collection reveals what it means to be a part of the desert.
Pictured Right: Detail of John De Puy, Arch, 18 x 24”, oil on canvas, 2004 Image 1
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1969, Isabel Ferreira-De Puy comes from humble beginnings. Her grandparents from both lineages were small agricultural landowners who planted and harvested most of the supplies they needed for daily living. Due to financial hardships, Isabel’s parents immigrated to the United States in 1972. She visited Portugal frequently, although New York City captured her attention. Isabel graduated from Parsons School of Design with a degree in Environmental Design and the dream of becoming an architect. However, the days she spent as a child painting on paper bags and other found canvases would prove difficult to leave behind. In 1996 after her graduation, Isabel turned towards the Southwest on a preliminary journey before seeing through her proposed plan of moving back overseas. When she arrived at the Laughing Horse Inn in Taos, the innkeepers introduced her to John De Puy. Isabel’s plans of moving abroad disappeared as quickly as John’s invitation to dinner arrived: “He came up to me one morning, shortly after I arrived, and in a very proper and old-fashioned manor asked if I would care to join him for dinner.” - A Conversation with Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, The Canyon Country Zephyr.
Pictured Left: Detail of Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Bear's Ears, 15 x 15”, oil on canvas, 2022 Image 2
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Meio-Dia, 36 x 30”, oil on canvas, 2007 Image 3
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Cerro Colorado, 23 x 23”, oil on canvas, c. 1970s Image 4
Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1927, John De Puy’s original roots were in New Mexico, with his grandfather, who owned a ranch in Mora in the late 1800s. His grandfather’s close ties to Taos Pueblo and the Navajo people form some of his earliest memories, comprised of trips to Monument Valley and Navajo Mountain. Spending time as a young man with Long Salt, a Navajo hataali (singer), profoundly influenced John’s life and the spiritual aspect of his art.
In the early 1950s, De Puy studied with Hans Hoffman in New York, following service in the military as a medic during WWII and the beginning of the Korean War. De Puy visited Taos, New Mexico, in 1949 and returned in 1952 to study with Louis Ribak at the Taos Valley Art School through the GI Bill. Along with Louis Ribak, Beatrice Mandelman, Agnes Martin, Robert Ray, Earl Stroh, Cliff Harmon, Ted Egri, and several others, De Puy became a part of a group of like-minded modern artists known as the Taos Moderns.
Pictured Left: Detail of John De Puy, Cliffs Along the Colorado River, 36 x 46”, oil and ink on canvas, 2004 Image 5
John De Puy, Volcano, 20 x 16”, oil on canvas, 2017 Image 6
John De Puy, Lava Field, 24 x 24”, oil on canvas, 2011 Image 7
Introduced to the Southwest through literature first, Isabel was quite familiar with the writings of Edward Abbey before meeting John, where the hallucinatory work of John was both birthed and memorialized in the same moment of conception. In Taos in the 1950s, John pledged to his close friend Abbey that he would paint the land of which his friend so poetically narrated. According to the Albuquerque Journal, John and Abbey’s formed pairing of hard-edge mindsets and eternal commitment to environmental protection, referenced as the “fraternity of the damned,” realized the truth of our hot, arid world as a fearsome one just as much as a beautiful one. There has never been a shyness in John’s ability to balance heaven and hell, presenting them both as the innerworkings of both man and nature. The result is the force at which John’s work comes alive, described by Abbey as “beyond the ordinary limits of human experience.”
The hands of John De Puy in his studio, photographed by Montanna Binder, 2022
John De Puy, Mule Point, Bisbee, AZ, 52 x 44”, oil on canvas, 1980 Image 8
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Cerro Colorado, 20 x 16”, oil on canvas, 2022 Image 9
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Cerro Verde, 15 x 15”, oil on canvas, 2022 Image 10
John De Puy, Clouds Over Black Mesa, AZ, 36 x 48”, oil on canvas, 2005 Image 11
John De Puy, Sun Arch Series, 36 x 48”, oil on canvas, 2004 Image 12
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Red Rocks, 52 x 44”, oil on canvas, 2016 Image 13
John De Puy, Owl Bridge, Natural Bridges, UT, 30 x 36”, oil on canvas, 2008 Image 14
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Desert Storm, 15 x 30”, oil on canvas, 2012 Image 15
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Mountain Sunset, 17 1/2 x 11 3/8”, oil on paper, 2022 Image 16
John De Puy, San Juan River, Utah, 30 x 36”, oil on canvas, 2006 Image 17
“His line and ink drawings and oil paintings represent clearly, recognizably, the landscape of the Southwest - mountains, buttes, abysmal gorges. But (John) De Puys’ landscape is not the landscape we see, but the one, he claims, is really there. A world of terror as well as beauty that lies beyond the ordinary limits of human experience, that forms the basis of experience, the ground of being.” -Edward Abbey
John De Puy, Cedar Mesa, 20 x 24”, oil on canvas, 2015 Image 18
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy photographed by John De Puy, 1997
Both John and Abbey worked hard to protect the National Parks and Monuments of the Southwest. It is this land that John would go on to explore with Isabel three decades later, becoming the foundation of their connection by sharing such otherwordly visions and profound love of the same seemingly desolate and dangerous fraction of the world.
Possessing her own unique journey that led her to this land, Isabel’s expressions of the Southwest differ from John’s hard-edge, mythical interpretations. In fact, as an aspiring architect, Isabel did not use color in her work until she met John and experienced his art. Her paintings are more mystical and endless, yet she has the ability to provide a glimpse into the land that becomes a focused composition, filtering out any excess noise. Nothing is set in stone when it comes to Isabel’s expressions of the Southwest, reflecting the infinite forms a single landscape can take on throughout one’s lifetime. There is a distance in Isabel’s work between artist and subject that can emerge, emphasizing the importance of giving space for a subject as alive as land to become its own being. Her fantastical visions depict hidden perspectives within the environment that seem to stay just out of reach of firm grasp. She allows the land to keep its secrets while revealing its radiant energy.
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Comanche Rim, 18 x 26” framed, oil on paper, 2022 Image 19
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Spring at the Springs, 11 3/8 x 17 1/2”, oil on paper, 2022 Image 20
Isabel Ferreira-De Puy, Sunshine Snow , 11 3/8 x 17 1/2 ”, oil on paper, 2022 Image 21
Isabel and John with their daughter Noelle, photographed by Judith Saum 2013
Today, Isabel and John live off-grid in Ojo Caliente in Taos County with an uninterrupted view of the land they love. Through conscious actions like hauling their own water, using solar energy, and heating their home with firewood, their lifestyle solidifies the mission of their artwork to honor and protect the lands of the Southwest. Taos has been home to John and Isabel ever since their story began, and in 2004, they welcomed their daughter Noelle into the world. Isabel continues to paint while taking care of both John, a now retired artist, and Noelle.
133 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte Ta o s , N M 8 7 5 7 1 575.758.2052