ENCANTADO
14 AUGUST - 01 OCTOBER
at the teahouse gallery
Paintings by Meredith Browne Kephart
‘Encantado’ is a meditation on time spent away from home, feeling a different seasonal pace, living inside an alternate landscape and palette. Distilling a series of sojourns in northern New Mexico, this group of work centers around a sense of place, filtering and translating sensory shifts into surfaces.
My practice of painting with dyed paper started in my Altadena studio in 2019, a material exploration inspired by the botanical splendor of the San Gabriel mountains. In January of 2025, the Eaton Fire struck Altadena, destroying my studio and catalyzing an unexpected exchange between Los Angeles and New Mexico.
Most of this work was made on site in Santa Fe, reflected through the lens of presence; the rest was created in Los Angeles, conjured through the lens of absence, refracting the place through feeling and memory. The rhythms of distinct seasons shape these pieces. So too do environmental extremes: dust, thin air, high uv, lack of humidity, monsoons, snow.
Each piece is created by layering translucent paper, building depth and texture through volume. Grounded in a mineral palette, many incorporate natural dyes and handmade watercolors. Using watercolor presents an evolution developed in displacement in Santa Fe. The whole process is slow and resistant, and every strata transforms the color and light of everything beneath it. The application is almost sculptural; topographies emerging on the canvas echo those of the surrounding landscape. These works ponder light: as it moves through and between surfaces, as it exits as color, and how color exists as memory.
The luminosity in these pieces is structural and applied. The relationships of the layers produce color of multiple origins and emphasize the absence of a central and fixed planar surface. These visual incantations summon both the expansive vastness and granular materiality of the high desert environment. The pieces coalesce into a body of work resting in and embracing the importance of elsewhere.