How One Artist Tells Stories Through Paint

Well-known painter Francis Livingston began his artistic journey as a storyteller, which has — for the past 25 years — evolved to encompass emotion, color, and pleasing aesthetics to drive his work without any ulterior motives or influence. Where and when can you view his newest oils?

“My work is about mood and environment. But I infuse it with enough reality that people can relate to it in some way,” says prolific artist Francis Livingston, who will soon open a solo exhibition at Meyer Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Titled “Western Journeys” and opening on August 18, the forthcoming exhibition will present a number of Livingston’s latest Southwest landscapes and Native American portraits and will continue through August 24.

“Swirling brushstrokes shape Livingston’s landscapes with bold colors reminiscent of twentieth-century Fauves,” the gallery writes. “Contemplative subjects soften the compositions, as Native Americans draped in richly colored robes exist in reverence and harmony with their environment. Livingston juxtaposes organic shapes against painterly patterns with a loose hand and balanced vision, following the movement of the paint and drawing inspiration from Abstract Expressionists like Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline. Livingston carries this freedom of movement into his architectural subjects, often working from old photographs of adobe churches in order to capture the pueblo structure’s smooth edges and old world feel. Livingston’s southwest imagery pays homage to the Taos Society of Artists of the twentieth century, whose work he discovered as a kid at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma. ‘I kept going back to those paintings,’ Livingston recalls of the Taos Founders, many of whom were also illustrators before becoming painters. ‘They were telling a story in one fashion or another with their paintings.’”

Learn more by visiting Meyer Galleries.

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