Go with the glow
Jun. 23—GREEN LIGHT
The village of Cerrillos is about 26 miles southwest of Santa Fe, via the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway (turquoisetrail.org). The trail, NM 14, is a 54-mile road that connects Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Seftel Gallery
—Open 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays, or by appointment
—8 First St., Cerrillos
—505-308-2022; seftelgallery.com
As a southbound driver nears the final bend on Turquoise Trail (NM 14) before veering toward Cerrillos, there's little to indicate that a charming quasi-ghost town of about 100 residents lies just ahead.
Similarly, as one approaches Seftel Gallery on the bucolic town's main street, the historic building's windowless walls offer no clues about the treasures contained within.
As a result, owner Paul Seftel says, visitors often have a "Wait, this is here?" reaction upon passing through the gallery's large wooden doors. They're greeted by dozens of artworks featuring Seftel's signature style: paint he creates using a mix of natural ingredients such as turquoise powder, limestone, diamond dust, and quartz.
Seftel opened the approximately 600-square-foot main gallery about three years ago and lives in an adjacent space with his wife. It's his busy season; drive-through traffic in Cerrillos and neighboring Madrid picks up in spring, Seftel says, when the Black Bird Saloon reopens and events such as the Crawdaddy Blues Fest draw visitors from both north and south.
Seftel bills his works as "landscapes of time, space, earth, light, and color." In the main gallery area, it's not always easy to pin down which of these five realms a painting delves into — or whether it touches on more than one of them. The 3-by-3-foot painting The Twilight of The Gods is an example, its blue and green hues offering clues about the landscape it features. A description on Seftel's website unravels the mystery, but not fully: "Nature reveals her secrets. The earth and sky react on the canvas, layer after layer a unique and unrepeatable form is born."
In other cases, his subject matter is clearly identifiable, including the "Secret Gardens" series that features plants and phosphorescent paint. He describes the series as "imagining a garden at night from an insect's perspective." Several works in the series are featured in a secret room separate from the gallery that doesn't allow in light when the door is closed.
While the light inside the room remains on, visitors see a handful of paintings featuring flowers and distinctly colored backdrops. When Seftel flips the light switch, the effect is dramatic: The only light left in the room emanates from the paintings, the lighter parts of which take on an otherworldly glow. The remaining light is discernibly natural; perhaps the best comparison is that to a glowing part of a firefly.
"It was an old shed that was being used to store things," Seftel says of the room. "It began to be an interesting experiment. To me it was about this feeling of creating a portal — a whole other space where light and time are suspended. New Mexico has always held a lot of subtle magic; subtle energies and intrigue are part of the landscape."
As visitors watch the paintings transform, Seftel enjoys gauging their reactions.
"That's really amazing to observe, that engagement, the 'a-ha' moments that people have on their own," he says. "So even just watching that is an art in itself."
Field of Dreams is among the phosphorescent paintings, and it's described as showing the transformation of night into day. At 2 feet by 3 feet, it's not particularly large by Seftel's standards.
It's telling that his gallery lists four sizes of paintings for sale: small, medium, large, and very large. How big is "very large"? The single-panel Interplanetary Channel is 6 feet, 10 inches wide and 5 feet tall. Riding the Waves of Time and Light is 6 feet by 9 feet. Cycle of Life: Dyptic is nearly 7 feet by 7 feet. Because of their sheer size, they create the illusion of being permanent fixtures.
In fact, the paintings find homes all over the country. "It just takes a big van and some good handling," Seftel says. "They've all been moved many times."
Even the 24-foot piece he was commissioned to create a couple of winters ago was transported smoothly from Cerrillos to Washington, D.C., Seftel says.
"I finally worked out that if I could make it three panels, it was going to be manageable," he says.
If Cerrillos seems an unlikely place for a gallery, it's also an unlikely place for a native Brit. Seftel, who grew up in the London area, says he fell in love with the Land of Enchantment while backpacking in the United States at age 18. He and his wife lived in Monterey, California, before moving to Cerrillos.
"It's the endless exploration," he says of his reasons for loving the Land of Enchantment. "There's something behind the veil of the world here that you can just contemplate — to get to that quiet place where things just rise up. And that's how my creativity comes. So it's constant, slow and steady."
