I have to confess my heart skipped a beat when I went into Maria’s studio to look at her latest work, her first post New-Mexico work, she is calling it “Plaza Blanco.” I am not unbiased about her work, but I thought it was amazing.

It was inspired by our trip to the White Place, the gorgeous white limestone cliffs that inspired some of Georgie O’Keefe’s most beautiful landscapes.

The White Place (below) was one of the most beautiful and moving sights on our trip to New Mexico, it was as powerful and beautiful a sight as I have seen in my life, and we mean to go back. O’Keefe’s paintings captured the mystical majesty of the cliffs. So did Maria, I think.

I knew it would inspire Maria’s art, but I was still surprised when I saw what she had done, and how brilliantly she evoked the feeling and simplicity of the place.

In New Mexico, an artist named Diana  Bryer sold he some old fabric from her mother, it included some lace doilies, and Maria took them and re-imagined them as the cliffs of the White Place, she calls it “Plaza Blanco.”

She caught the symbolism and the unadorned power of the place, and is evoking it in her own stye in a hanging piece, as yet unfinished and not yet for sale. You can follow the making of this very beautiful, even haunting place, on her blog.

It touched me in a very personal way. I guess this is why artists love New Mexico so much.