This image shows a painting which is framed in a pigmented pastel grey panel that includes fragments of earth and rocks from the sites where the paintings were made. This painting reveals a bird’s-eye view of an array of potsherds that are sitting or wedged into the desiccated soil. Potsherds, in New Mexico, are broken pieces of pueblo pottery that tend to surface on the ground after a rain storm. The soil is painted as if to show water erosion by using curly and circular brush strokes to accentuate numerous little clumps and clots of clay dirt and little passage ways for water to travel between around pottery sherds and fragments. The scattered clusters of potsherds, rendered as precious artifacts, vary in shape, size, color, and design - some triangular or small broken rectangles, some with gray surfaces and black linear stripes and others with more intricate design patterns, incorporating faded blues, pinks, greens, and terra cotta colorings. This painting is like a magnifying glass for the viewer, allowing one to reach down and touch.

Ku’uinge Pueblo Pottery Fragments

ArtistJosephine Halvorson
Year2020
Dimensions32 x 32 inches (81.3 x 81.3 cm)
MediumGouache and site material on panels
CreditCourtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

O’Keeffe never tired of exploring the area around her Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú homes. Halvorson also made a practice of walking and hiking while in Northern New Mexico. On a return visit, following her residency, she visited Ku’uinge, an ancestral pueblo site that was occupied from around 1366 to 1500. There she painted this work, a meditation on preservation and erasure.