Mary Beth Pizzoli
Landscapes of Northern New Mexico
Santa Fe New Mexico

I feel very fortunate to be an artist in Santa Fe.  Our clear, dry air, combined with the high altitude, provides bright sunlight.   I'm inspired by the natural beauty here--the mountain vistas, rivers and streams, trees and flowers, and our incomparable skies.  The manmade features, such as the historic mountain villages, old adobe houses and churches, gated courtyards and walled gardens also inspire me.  It's lovely here most of the year, from the golden aspens and cottonwoods, to snow on adobes, to the wildflowers alongside dirt roads and gardens inside adobe walls.  I try to convey the essence of northern New Mexico in my paintings.

I started sketching from life at an early age and began taking painting lessons at age 12 when my family moved to Taos, New Mexico.  I continued to paint and study art while raising my two children and having a career as a Personnel Manager.  I took an early retirement in 2000 to become a full-time working artist and to travel with my husband to places we'd never been.

My husband and I live in an adobe house which I designed and built with my family on five wooded acres in the foothills southeast of Santa Fe.  Here we're surrounded by my gardens, tall ponderosas and pinon trees, and mountain vistas.

After painting in a number of mediums over the years, I now work only with oils.  I'm primarily a studio painter but do some plein air work, especially in the summer when I love being outdoors.  I paint from photographs, small plein air studies, memories of a place and imagination.  Photographs are used as partial references.  When I'm not painting, I travel the back roads of northern New Mexico looking for new scenes. 

My landscapes are warm and bright, yet quiet and peaceful, and my style is traditional without being totally realistic.  I'm always striving to show the effect of the pure light on the landscape.