Surface, edge, and the weight of a place.
I came to painting from a decade in graphic design, and I still build a picture the way I built a page — in passes, removing more than I add.
Cold wax lets me lay the paint thick and then scrape into it. What is left is a record of the removals as much as the marks. On birch panel the edge stays true, so a piece can be hung close and read at the surface.
I paint the country around Taos: winter light on the mesa, the river cut, smoke from piñon in the cold. I am not after the view. I am after the weight of standing in it.
…panels that hold the desert's light.
Mara Vance
BiographyMara Vance is a painter in Taos, New Mexico, working in oil and cold wax on birch panel. She has painted full time since 2017.
Mara Vance (b. 1985) lives and works in Taos, New Mexico. After ten years as a graphic designer she began painting full time in 2017.
Her landscape-abstraction is built in named series and shown regionally in New Mexico and Colorado. In 2025 she completed a residency at the Rift Studios, Abiquiú.
Her work is held in private collections across the Southwest.
Occasional notes from the studio — a few times a year.
This is a demonstration — no address is stored and no email is ever sent.
Demonstration imagery
Photo creditsDemonstration imagery: the paintings shown on this site are stand-in photographs, sourced via Pexels. Photography by:
- Steve Johnson — High Desert Winter and Río Grande work photography, via Pexels
- Mark Henry Rood — Río Grande work photography, via Pexels
- Kunstbube — Río Grande work photography, via Pexels
- Adam Balcombe — Río Grande work photography, via Pexels
- engin akyurt — Piñón Smoke work photography, via Pexels
- RLLDied — Piñón Smoke work photography, via Pexels
- ImVitorDiniz — Piñón Smoke work photography, via Pexels
- Ulrick T — Studio photography, via Pexels
- Alfo Medeiros — Northern New Mexico landscape, via Pexels