Three artists, who will be showing in the Rio Rancho Art Association Studio Tour on April 26, moved to New Mexico at some time or another from other places in the country.

They came for the clean air, the vistas, and the beauty.

Yvonne Korotky started painting in New York before moving to Rio Rancho, but Damon Rawlings, who is a painter, and Mikki Roth, who is a photographer, did not start their art careers until they moved here. Roth came to Rio Rancho in 1978 with her three little girls. Her uncles lived here, and she felt it would be easier financially in New Mexico than in Long Island.

Though she still misses the ocean, when she looks up at the Sandia Mountains it is enough. In those days, the Samon’s store was a Smith’s food store, and that was it as far as civilization in Rio Rancho.

But, there was the flip side. For the first time, Roth saw nature as it was without the influence of a city.

“We could do things out of doors,” Roth says, and the mountain was there.

The beauty of the land stunned her. She picked up a little camera and began to document and tell her story of New Mexico through the lens.

“It had a life of its own,” Roth says. “It takes you down a path.”

One photograph, which ran in New Mexico Magazine, is called Mountain Spirits.

It is her three days spent with the Mescalero Apaches during the girl’s puberty rites. They go out into the fields and gather the plant, stripping off the leaves and then cooking it. The gathering starts in May, but the puberty rites are planned for July.

“It was a spiritual kind of work,” Roth says, but speaks of how the first photo she photographed, matted, and then sold was her most significant piece.

It gave her life as a professional photographer. She shot a hummingbird in the Gila Wilderness near Silver City.

It was if the hummingbird was sitting on a branch waiting for her.

“She’s the one that gave me a start on this journey,” Roth said. “That’s the one that got me started.”

Rawlings came to Rio Rancho from a circuitous journey, which took him from Washington, D.C. to Maryland to St. Petersburg, Fla. in 1995.

He says it is the people of New Mexico, which made him love it here, though he certainly loves the landscape of the land.

“It is the friendliest place I ever lived,” Rawlings says. “The first home I bought here was in Rio Rancho.”

At that time, he said the city was a big small town.

Rawlings worked as a printer, and it is probably from his knowledge of color and the visuals he saw in his work that could have set him on his journey toward becoming an artist.

He has been painting for five or six years, and he said, “some of his paintings come from his imagination and memory.”

“A place or scene will stir my feelings like a fragrance will stir memories,” Rawlings says.

With the studio tour coming up his art is becoming a lifestyle. He is busy selling his work and getting ready to sell his paintings.

“I am making as much good art as I can make,” Rawlings said.

The paintings of Yvonne Korotky are also showing the New Mexico Bank and Trust lobby this month.

Korotky had the soul for art when very young, but as life does it takes you on other journeys until you are forced to understand one day that you are an artist. So, you must paint. There is no other way for someone creative to respond. You must say “yes!”

The defining moment for Korothy was while watching a television art demonstration by Bob Ross when she lived in New York. She said she immediately went and bought “acrylic paints, cheap paint brushes, and art books.

It was a course of self-study, which has taken this artist on an interesting and profound journey. For she has come to know what moves her as an artist, and what is not important.

What helped that journey are her mentors. After moving to Rio Rancho, she met local resident and artist Hal Ashmead, who worked as a court artist covering Sirhan Sirhan. Ashmead is a recognized artist nationally. In fact, he has a painting at the Pentagon. He is now a portrait artist. Ashmead agreed to mentor Korotky. Under his tutelage, Korotky learned more of her craft. They worked together until November 2004.

“I was thrilled to be taught by him,” Korotky said, thinking back on what she learned, on how she grew as an artist.

Two weeks later, Korotky met her next mentor, Evelyn Peters, who now lives in Glorietta.

They worked together until January 1007. Peters told Korotky she had taught her everything she knew.

“She said, ‘You just need to spread your wing and go on your own,” Korotky told me. “Those were her exact words.”

Evelyn said my strongest talent was in florals and landscapes, Korotky admited, though I am more interested in painting florals, water and animals than landscapes.

Korotky talks about her art. For instance, how it takes time to get shadows right, to make them look like they should.

“Anybody can paint a shadow, but it might not be ‘right,’” Korotky says. “It is how you create a shadow.”

She also talks about a large floral painting she painted with an abstract background. A lady wanted to buy it for $1,000, and she was tempted. But, then she asked herself if it was that good, why would she want to sell it? And, then she is thinking she should learn from this painting. How could she incorporate that abstract quality to other florals?

Another painting is born...