ARTURO CHÁVEZ

Arturo Chávez was born in 1949 in Embudo, New Mexico near Taos. He was raised amid the spectacular vistas of Northern New Mexico. Chávez is dedicated to preserving the landscape, by painting it. He painted throughout his youth, but did not turn to art as a full-time career until the 1980s. Since then, he has received international recognition for his landscapes, including exhibitions in the US embassies in Moscow, Croatia and Guyana. Publicly, Chávez's works can be seen as part of the permanent collections at New Mexico State University, The Bernalillo County Courthouse, The Santa Fe Capitol Collection, the Taos National Guard, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. His work is also in corporate collections around the world including Ebner International in Linz, Austria, Fuji Electric in Japan and the permanent collection of Burlington Northern Railway.

Like many gifted artists, Chávez is also a talented musician--he studied classical concert guitar at the University of New Mexico. He also was a mission pilot for the civil air patrol. In his artistic process, Arturo Chávez uses a combination of on location studies coupled with many compositional drawings and intermediate painting studies he creates in his studio to arrive at a finished painting for an exhibition.