Western Traditions by Michael Duty 2005

An American Ranch & Rodeo Painter

WESTERN TRADITIONS
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from Western Traditions
by Michael Duty 2005

The clean light of the West is sometimes lost when translated into art, but Sandie Witbeck renders it faithfully. Her paintings reflect not only her sense of light, but her extraordinary range of experiences that enrich every image with a headlong vitality. Witbeck is a lifelong artist who recently became a painter. Her background in photojournalism and documentary photography has taught her to see clearly. She says, "I spent so many years looking through the frame of the viewfinder that my eye was trained for composition and cropping." She concentrates on the subject and keeps the rest of the details to a minimum. Her understanding of backlighting, contrast, and the patterns of shadows makes her viewpoint undeniably real.

Witbeck was raised in Napa Valley, California, where her family grew Pinot Noir grapes for the wine-making industry. She got her first horse, Sassy, at twelve. "I had her for twenty-six years," she says. "I took her to college with me, and I rode her all the time. I would have let her into the living room. She was that kind of horse." She earned her BA in Fine Arts from the University of California at Davis in 1973, then took off to see the world as an international flight attendant transporting refugees, pilgrims and tourists over every continent while observing a cross-section of world cultures and customs.

She returned to the United States spending the next twelve years as a freelance photojournalist for newspapers and magazines. On her first trip to New Mexico in 1990, she photographed the dances at Taos Pueblo. Drawn to the Southwest, she came back later that year. Crossing over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, she looked back at the mountains and knew she was home. Over the next few years, she worked at various jobs, including a stint as a sous chef. Always, she continued with her photography. While covering a local rancher for the Taos News, she accepted a job cowboying in the Valle Vidal in northern New Mexico for the next two years.

Witbeck settled north of Taos in an old adobe surrounded by apricot trees and huge cottonwoods, where she raises heirloom pumpkins, gourds, and winter squash to sell at the farmers’ market. When she began oil painting, she had thousands of negatives and slides from all her years with the camera. Her rodeo pictures, in particular, provided her with a bank of visual information that helped her make the transition from documentary photographer to fine artist. "I didn’t just go to the rodeo," she says. "I got to see what’s behind it. Rodeo is about more than people and animals. It is about life, death, connection, and what is really left of the West. Some of these people have become close to me. That’s the kind of spirit I want to put into my work. I want to be a storyteller."

Born: San Francisco 1951.
Educ: BA, U. Cal. at Davis.
Exhib: Las Vegas NV Cowboy Christmas.
Mountain Oyster Club, Tucson.