New art showcasing Native and Latino culture

A new art exhibit has come to the Tombaugh Gallery, 2000 S. Solano Dr., featuring art that depicts Native American lives.

Mary Beagle is a Las Cruces based artist and her work primarily showcases what she sees as she visits different places around New Mexico as well as her home town in Connecticut. She takes photos of Native American life.

Beagle's work features Latino life and is mostly inspired from the sights she has seen in Las Cruces and Santa Fe. Once her paintings are finished, her husband makes custom frames for the paintings to hang in.

“We have gone to quite a few powwows and dance demonstrations and things like that so I take pictures there and then do the paintings,” Beagle said. 

Beagle said that in addition to helping her learn more about Native and Latino cultures, her art is also how she and her husband keep busy in retirement. She also said that it is always a nice feeling when somebody looks at her work.

“They will give you their impressions of the way the paintings make them feel,” Beagle said. “It is just kind of interesting hearing different people's perspectives on the different paintings.”

In addition to her paintings, Mary is also a sculptor having learned this medium at a carving workshop in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.

Committee member for the Tombaugh Gallery Barbara Williams said that she is happy that Beagle's artwork is being displayed and she also spoke highly of her sculpting abilities.

“She really does beautiful paintings and the sculptures that she does are also wonderful in different alabaster, marble and other materials,” Williams said.

According to a press release sent out by Williams, Beagle's work has appeared in Southwest Art," "Art of the West,” and “Cowboys and Indians,” magazines. She also has work in Tucson at the Jane Hamilton Fine Art Gallery, and locally at Café de Mesilla.  

The artwork is scheduled to be featured in the gallery until late October.