'If you're not lost, you're not fighting': Angus Macpherson brings landscapes to his Old Town gallery

Jun. 9—Sometimes the luminous cloudscapes resemble the delicate petals of an iris.

At other times, the shimmer of a crescent moon peeks through the trees.

After 15 years of showcasing his work upstairs at Sumner & Dene Gallery, Angus Macpherson has opened one of his own at 806 Mountain Road in Albuquerque's Old Town.

The artist bought the circa 1920s bungalow with the pink driveway in 2003. He ran it as a gallery until 2008, then rented it out after moving to Sumner & Dene. Now he's back.

A mammoth 60-by-84-inch painting of the shoreline at Hawaii's Big Island greets visitors with tumbling impressions and splashes of pink, gold and lavender cotton candy clouds. The foam of the waves echoes the curled edges of the clouds.

"Roy (Johnson, Sumner & Dene's owner) and I did so well together," Macpherson mused. "The last two years were the best. I got a check for his last month. It was 20 grand for me."

Johnson retired and closed the gallery on Halloween of 2023.

Macpherson also paints pines, its branches reaching for the sky like arms from a ground-level view. His snow scenes can make viewers want to snuggle in their cabins and read by firelight.

The painter's Albuquerque roots dig deep. His grandfather worked for the railroad in 1889. He also served as the business manager for the Albuquerque Morning Journal, the city's first newspaper. Macpherson still visits his grandmother's old cabin in the Pecos Wilderness. His father was a lawyer and then a judge.

"I've been painting the sky in Albuquerque since 1983," he said.

At the behest of his parents, Macpherson majored in business at the University of New Mexico, but he still managed to sneak in some art classes. A former ad salesman, he worked at both the Albuquerque Journal and Tribune. He started his own landscape business. But the canvas called.

At 31, he risked it all to become a full-time painter. By 1983, he was in galleries on Santa Fe's famed Canyon Road and in Albuquerque. Since then, Macpherson has boasted gallery representation in Santa Fe; Aspen, Colorado; Tucson; Scottsdale, Arizona; Dallas; and in New York. He most recently sold a painting to the Albuquerque International Sunport.

Macpherson doesn't take photographs or paint plein air. Instead, he mines his memories of the Sangre de Cristo, the Pecos Wilderness and the Sandias for source material. Pastel washes of color bathe his canvas in a sea of acrylic lights and darks.

"I work a lot like a watercolor painter," he explained. "The paint is real wet."

He has always looked skyward.

Painting is an adventure, Macpherson said.

"I like the pauses and the struggle," he said. "If you're not lost, you're not fighting.

"I am absolutely infatuated with the landscape," he explained. "Half of what's up in the gallery is northern New Mexico — the Sangre de Cristos. It's awe-inspiring. It blows my mind; I feel awestruck and fascinated. It's a subject matter that is accessible and spectacular."

His influences range from the abstract expressionism of Robert Motherwell and Wassily Kandinsky to Pablo Picasso and the Taos artists.

"It all was delicious," he said.

Macpherson's washes of color could be almost abstract were it not for the recognizable land formations of trees, shorelines and mountains.

He loves it when clients and visitors misinterpret his work.

"One customer hung it over her grand piano," he said. "She was looking at my painting and she said, 'I discovered it was a landscape and I liked it even better.'"

Others find unintentional imagery in the shapes and shadows of his clouds.

"This guy said to his wife, 'Do you see the bear?' It was great."

"Pecos Wilderness Rain" shows a silhouetted stand of pines against a classic Macpherson sky of blues, purples and lavenders. He produced its cascading streams of light with the help of masking tape. Macpherson paints over the tape, then removes it and fills in the rest.

"I've always felt this sense of wonder and awe from kicking around this planet," Macpherson said. "The celestial heavens just knock me out. Things might seem dire on earth, but what a trip this is."