Chasing Santa Fe: Aleta Pippin - Spirit of a Studio

10.17.2013

Aleta Pippin - Spirit of a Studio

A P A S S I O N F O R C O L O R

Photography by C. Whitney-Ward

Aleta Pippin, owner of PIPPIN CONTEMPORARY on Canyon Road, is a working artist and most afternoons she can be found in her airy, light-filled studio just behind Warehouse 21. It's a wonderful space filled with easels, stretched canvas frames waiting to be transformed into a wonderland of color, and jars and tubes and sticks of acrylic and oil paint are everywhere.

It is a studio immersed in energy and passion and the paint-spattered tools of her trade.

And just-finished canvases are stacked against walls.

Pippin has not always been an Abstract Expressionist painter, but she has always been on an artistic path. "I began with figurative work and studied with Harley Brown."

When she first moved to Santa Fe, she took some classes with Roberta Harris - a former Houston artist - whose preferred medium was acrylics. More artist's classes followed and eventually she embraced the world of abstract.

"I really liked the freedom of expression; I'm a colorist and didn't want to be restricted. Each new canvas is like giving birth."