Taos, NM Wilder Nightingale Fine Art, August 23-September 15
This story was featured in the September 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art September 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
LIGHT IS A dynamic and dominant force in the works of husband and wife Peggy and Steve Immel, who team up this month for a show at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in their hometown of Taos, NM. In Immel + Immel: Rhythm and Light, Peggy displays as many as 10 new plein-air and studio paintings alongside a similar number of black-and-white photographs by Steve.
The Immels, who attend an artists’ reception on Saturday, August 31, at 5 p.m., have exhibited their work together twice before—once in 2015, when they turned their attention to the local Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, and again in 2017, when the duo focused more broadly on their home state. For their latest show, says Peggy, “we wanted to have our work relate, but in a more abstract fashion.” Although both artists generally focus on Southwestern imagery, she adds, “Steve is more drawn to the remains of man’s presence, whereas [I tend] to portray landscapes that aren’t always influenced by man.”
What the pair share in common artistically is an interest in the often rhythmic effects produced when light illuminates the world they capture, Peggy at her easel and Steve through his camera lens. “Both of us feel the mood of a piece is often determined by these qualities of the light,” says Peggy, whose latest collection of oil paintings highlight tranquil scenes around northern New Mexico in her expressive, painterly style. In one piece, twilight fast descends upon a sagebrush-flanked wash; in another work, magpies roost among a tree’s bare branches as golden glimmers of sunlight persevere through an overcast winter sky.
Steve, a seasoned photographer who traded large-format film for digital photography in 2002, showcases luminous slices of life in the Southwest and beyond. His landscape photography, in particular, tends to take viewers into “desolate and forgotten places,” he says, “where man’s presence was fleeting and failed.” Influenced by seminal mid-century photographers such as Wynn Bullock and Paul Strand, Steve started his career with a focus on still lifes before branching out into portrait and environmental photography. “But,” he says, “my real love is street photography, where I try to find the magic storytelling moment.” It’s very special, Steve adds, “when a moment in time becomes art.” Perhaps, on that note, he speaks for his wife as well. —Kim Agricola
contact information575.758.3255www.wnightingale.com
This story was featured in the September 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art September 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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