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Alamogordo, NM — Otero Arts will open a new exhibition, “Eight Plein Air Artists,” with a public reception this Friday, September 4, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Otero Artspace, 1118 Indiana Avenue at 12th Street.
The show features work by eight area painters: Anne Aleshire, Janet Amtmann, Lyn Canham, Rand Carlson, Deidre Kindthistle, Sue Nichols, Julie Ford Oliver, and Diana Powell. Their paintings were created on site at locations across the region, including Bent, Tularosa Falls, High Rolls, Alamogordo, La Luz, White Sands National Park, Nichols Ranch, and the Alamogordo Zoo. Media represented in the show include acrylic, oil, watercolor, pastel, and gouache.
Plein air painting — a portrait of the landscape in natural light — is a genre developed by painters in the 1800s who left their dark studios behind, carrying easels and tubes of paint outdoors.
Most of the artists in the show began painting together in October 2025 in a plein air workshop taught by Santa Fe artist Anita Louise West. Since then, the group has met one day a week to paint “en plein air.” Many have practiced the craft for years, painting throughout New Mexico as well as on trips abroad, in Alaska, and elsewhere.
Visitors to the exhibition will find anecdotes displayed alongside the paintings, describing what drew each artist to the subject of the piece. Kindthistle’s “The Pool,” for example, began as a tribute to David Hockney and became a farewell portrait: after 30 years of offering citizens a friendly respite from summer’s heat, the city pool is slated for demolition, to be replaced by a modern natatorium.
For Amtmann, who came to ranch life as a young woman, plein air painting is a way of preserving a quietly vanishing world. For decades she has painted what surrounds her in the Sacramento Mountains — the horses and cattle, the orchards and wildflowers, the storms and long evening light, and the people who make their lives on that ground.
“Eight Plein Air Artists” runs through September 26. The Otero Artspace gallery is open Thursday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m.
This October, Otero Arts will offer its fourth plein air workshop, again taught by Anita Louise West. Sign-up details are available at oteroarts.org. Anyone interested in joining the plein air painters on Thursdays may contact janet.amtmann@gmail.com.
The exhibit is supported by New Mexico Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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