Art Auction benefits
Music from Angel Fire

Music from Angel Fire has a long tradition of auctioning the piece of art chosen each season.  This year, Jennifer Cavan’s “Taking the Back Roads,” has been won.  Thank you everyone who participated in the auction and especially to Jennifer Cavan for her creation and generosity.  The winner of the painting will be announced–if they wish to be named–at the August 30 concert.

Visual Art at Music from Angel Fire

Music from Angel Fire has garnered enthusiastic acclaim from music lovers and art aficionados for illustrating the website and print pieces for each season by top visual artists inspired by the beauty and culture of northern New Mexico.  The series, launched by the late Harold Geller when he was the first board president of Music from Angel Fire, has become an integral part of the annual festival.  Through this series, Geller left his imprint on the festival.  With his leadership, a visual artist was selected each year to create a featured work.

For the 2023 season of Music from Angel Fire–the 40th anniversary, here is visual artist Jennifer Cavan.

Jennifer spent much of her childhood and teenage years making art, but pursued a liberal arts education. While earning a degree in history from Brown University, she took art classes on the side. After spending the early part of her adult life in the corporate world in Chicago, she decided to follow her love of art when New Mexico’s clarity of light, rich feeling of tradition and strong sense of place pulled here “home.” Jennifer and her husband quit their corporate jobs and moved to the mountains of northern New Mexico. Shortly thereafter, she began working with oil pastels. Two dozen years later, they are still her favorite medium. The buttery feel and the directness of applying the pigment without the go-between of a brush continue to fuel her love for these buttery crayon-like sticks.

Of her own work, Jennifer says, “Combining my love of history and culture with my passion for the New Mexico landscape and simple architecture, I create art that reflects the timelessness of that subject matter. I’m fascinated with the state’s Spanish Colonial past and the way it merges into and influences the present. Relying on photographs, sketches, and memories of places I have found along the back roads of the American West, I use vibrant, saturated colors, bold compositions and slightly altered perspectives to present, rather than represent, this special place. My “rose colored glasses” interpret the scenes with heightened color. Mine is a contemporary depiction of an ageless place.”

Music from Angel Fire is grateful to Jennifer Cavan for her talent and her generosity as a friend, artist, and inspiration.