Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)
December 22, 2006 Friday

love of landscapes;
AFTER NEARLY 70 YEARS OF PAINTING, RICHARD TASHJIAN STILL IS
AWESTRUCK BY NEW MEXICO’S SCENERY

by DOTTIE INDYKE For the Journal

One of Richard Tashjian’s favorite places to paint is along the Rio
Grande, in the villages of Embudo and Velarde and onward to Taos. In
addition, as with thousands of painters before him, he’s drawn to the
stands of cottonwoods and red rock cliffs of Nambé, Ojo Caliente and
Abiquiu.

Ever since he landed in Santa Fe in the mid-’90s, Tashjian has been
awestruck by the scenery of the region. His latest work, on view at
Editions Gallery, features depictions of this landscape, as well as
that of Canyon de Chelly and the Grand Canyon. A portion of sales
will be donated to the Santa Fe Animal Shelter.

A painter for nearly 70 years, Tashjian still experiments with
watercolor, acrylic and oil. The Old Masters’ medium, oil, allows
easy changes and blending of colors. Acrylic, which he calls "the
modern medium," provides "a fresh, quick approach." But watercolor is
his favorite, and the material he’s used since he was a 12-year-old
boy growing up in Chelsea, Mass.

"Watercolor is the basic medium for learning to paint," he says. "A
lot of people cannot master it. It’s a separate medium altogether and
very spontaneous."

Paintings exhibited at Editions include both oils and acrylics, begun
on location with sketches and photographs. Tashjian employs the
viewfinder of his camera as an aid in composing his canvases, but the
work is always revised once he is back in his studio, where reality
and imagination are married.

Born in 1926, his earliest artistic memories are of sketching on the
back of his sister’s school notebooks. His uncle was a painter and
the career impressed him so much that he enrolled at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts school, where he majored in commercial art and
advertising.

During WWII, stationed in Rhode Island, he was a Navy photographer
training to shoot aerial photos. After the war he worked as an art
director for advertising agencies and for Boston’s Herald Traveler
and took early retirement to paint, running his own studio and
gallery in Massachusetts. Travel in Europe and the U.S. led to his
first visit to Santa Fe, in 1995. Two years later he permanently
relocated.

Among his proudest accomplishments is the founding of the Armenian
Artists Association of America. The group, all American artists of
Armenian descent, held several shows in Armenia and America from the
1970s through the ’90s, and donated approximately 80 paintings to
Armenia’s Museum of Modern Art.

"Armenia reminds me of Santa Fe," he says. "The mountains, the rocks
… and they even have Russian olive trees. The similarities of the
land were very impressive to me."

After a decade focused on New Mexico, Tashjian has lost none of his
excitement about the painting possibilities. Driving along the Rio
Grande to Taos this fall, he says, "It just hit me. There was some
beautiful scenery to work with. It comes for every artist – you just
explode when you see things like that."

If you go

WHAT: Paintings by Richard Tashjian

WHEN: Through Dec. 31

WHERE: Editions Gallery, 731 Canyon Road

CONTACT: 820-6148,

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