Pre-eminent gallery of contemporary sculptures and paintings.

Sally Hepler

Karan Ruhlen began exhibiting Sally Hepler’s work in June 1998. “I had no intention of showing sculpture in my gallery until Sally Hepler knocked on my door. When I first saw Sally’s work it was the first sculpture I had seen that struck me because it was so beautiful and pristine. No other sculptor came close to my standards of craftsmanship and aesthetic sensibility. Sally filled the void that I did not even know existed,” says Karan. Her sensual work, clean and graceful, is fluid and rhythmic. She is one of the foremost artists working in the field of metal fabrication.

Elaine Holien

Elaine Holien’s renditions of New Mexico landscapes have gained her recognition in the past 35 years as a pioneer in innovative processes of art mediums. She was the first to print archival artwork on iris printers in the 1990s. The large shapes and brilliant colors of her landscapes are also reflected in her detailed textures and patterns in her contemporary work. “In the end they’re portraits of land, and of course, they are self portraits too.”

Janet Lippincott

For the past 55 years Janet Lippincott has been a force in New Mexico’s contemporary arts scene. As a former student of Emil Bistram’s Abstract Transcendental School Lippincott is a New Mexico Modernist. Karan Ruhlen Gallery has represented her work exclusively for the past 8 years. On May 16th of 2006, Ms. Lippincott celebrated her 88th birthday. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums throughout her career. In 2002, she was honored with the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, our most distinguished award for artists in the state of New Mexico.

Kurt Meer

Tennessean Kurt Meer prefers ambiguity. He guides the viewer through his tonalist oil paintings using light and a bird’s eye view of elements that are knowable in the foreground but quickly dissolve into unfamiliar territory at a bend in a river or a vanishing point where nothing separates earth and sky. “Experiences are never clear and definitive,” says Meer, describing both his worldview as well as a reason why his imagined landscapes become mystical journeys.

Daniel Phill

Daniel Phill received his BFA at The San Francisco Art Institute and completed his MFA at Stanford University in painting. This newest body of work explores the equilibrium between representation and abstraction. “Many of my abstract paintings have naturally evolved into allusive representations of plants and flowers. I have been working in the place between composing and dissolving of images.” Inspiration for this work comes after careful examination of nature, time, intuition, and a desire to portray living things in a different way. Flowers, plants, and vegetation appear and vanish, submerged under layers of pigment and washes. The artist uses a fluid application of paint, combined with scraping and smearing using nontraditional painting tools. The paintings evolve over time through multiple layers of gesso, ink, acrylic paint, crayon and pastel. Through gesture and perception, the artist creates work that is both organic and unrehearsed.

Jinni Thomas

Jinni Thomas’ work seeks to explore a quiet stillness and evokes contemplation. The surfaces are achieved through an intense layering process, pooling of paint and sanding or wiping it away. The artist constructs each layer with the knowledge that it will be destroyed. “I am nearly always dissatisfied with the marks I make when creating. But love what happens when I reduce those marks with sandpaper.” She paints each mark consciously knowing the history of the marks will be revealed later. In the reduction process marks from lower layers begin to push forward just as memories can pop into our own consciousness.

Kevin Tolman

“I paint because I am in awe of it. Making art is my way of celebrating the incredible beauty and mystery all around me; even in the simplest forms... the shadow of a moth, the way birds form as they fly, the soft rattle of the cottonwoods.” The work of Kevin Tolman is vibrant, explosive, and spontaneous. A lifelong painter, Kevin has painted all over the world and is inspired by these travels and the act of painting, and incorporates the natural environment into his work. Each painting is a search for that essence that keeps us waking up to the adventure of being alive every day.

Pauline Ziegen

Pauline Ziegen employs techniques used by old masters and romantic painters: Turner, Corot, Innes, and Corbet who used complex layering to shape light. She explores a moderist view of the landscape. The work examines a romantic myth, an untouched view of the American West. Her signature mark is the inclusion of a few select dotted lines etched in the surface of the under painting that are revealed upon close inspection of the work. These marks suggest a passage of time. They are a reminder of that which is no longer in view... the movement of the clouds, a trace of the past. Her paintings are minimal renderings of the landscape. “They are my songs to nature, in honor and celebration of the natural world.”

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LAST MODIFIED: July 8, 2008