Winner of the 2016 American Art Awards for Best Gallery in New Mexico, Wilder Nightingale Fine Art is home to several talented artists, but I asked Rob Nightingale to pick just three for this post.

It was a tough call, but the gallery’s charming owner came through with three extremely different, yet definitively Western painters with unique points of view.

The late Rory Wagner’s work is powerfully individualistic in its singular expression. He painted mostly large canvases, but even in his smaller pieces there is a compelling, larger-than-life quality.

Wagner was born in 1950 and raised in Florida but Taos was his home for many years and the American West; its mythology and people, informed his work until his untimely death in 2010.

Wagner was the recipient of the 2006 New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Art’s, a huge accomplishment for the artist who was largely self-taught. Rory was initially drawn to the works of the Dutch master of portraiture – Vermeer, and his use of shadow and light.

Soon after arriving in Taos more than three decades ago, he met the Navajo artist, RC Gorman. Gorman recognized Wagner’s talent and introduced him to the artistic community here in Taos, became his mentor, and remained a life-long friend.

Rob Nightingale has just hung several new works in print by Wagner, at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art

“These are really beautiful, high quality pieces,” says Rob, “many of them never seen before now, and are highly collectible.”

The prints are stunning depictions of Native Americans from many different Tribes. Wagner is known for his renderings of Cowboys, but clearly he was inspired by the original inhabitants of the Americas also.

Another artist the Wilder Nightingale is showcasing through the Holiday Season is Geraldine Liermann who is known for her small acrylics on canvas. Small these works might be, but her Fauvist palette and broad, gestural brushstrokes conjure the big skies and endless horizon of the region.

“To me, her landscapes of Northern New Mexico not only glow with color, they have a feeling of silkscreen or woodblock prints reminding me of the works by Gustave Baumann.” Rob says.

Lierman’s work is also very affordable and would make a perfect gift for the art lover in your life.

Ditto with the stunningly beautiful sunsets Stephen Day paints.

One of the first artists to join the gallery 25 years ago, working primarily in oils, Stephen Day is a full-time artist living in New Mexico and Arizona where he is renowned for his plein air paintings of the regional landscapes.

Painting the beauty of his natural environment is Day’s ‘first love,’ and he frequently paints on location using the smaller works as studies for larger paintings completed in the studio.

Born in Wyoming, Day has lived in some of the most breathtaking areas in the West, including Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Durango and Aspen, Colorado, all of which have informed his work.

When he discovered painting, he found a vehicle through which to express what he saw in the changing light and breathtaking beauty of the landscape he has lived in his entire life.

For more information on these and all the other talented artists this wonderfully eclectic gallery represents, please visit their site linked below this post.

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All images c/o Wilder Nightingale Fine Art