David A Leffel by Melissa A Leffel

I arrived in Taos in March, 1996, the week of my 29^th birthday. I was six months pregnant, escaping from a bad relationship with my baby’s father, looking to start a new life. I didn’t know much about Taos, but my dad had told me it was a perfect place to start over.

My father, David A. Leffel, and his partner, Sherrie McGraw, took me out to dinner the night I arrived and we celebrated my birthday. They introduced me to everyone at the restaurant, from the owners, to the waiters, to the customers. They knew everyone.

I was sad for a few weeks after I arrived. Dad and Sherrie gave me space and let me settle into my pregnancy, my new town, and my unknown future, with patience, generosity, and more love than I felt I deserved.

Every morning, I sat with my dad for breakfast before following him into his studio and watching him work, just like I did when I was a little girl. But I was not a little girl anymore so I noticed different things about his work and about him as an artist.

My father works with a fierce concentration. I have never seen such focus. Even the air around him is sucked into a weird, powerful vortex of intensity. Watching him, I never knew if what was happening on the canvas was good or bad. I couldn’t tell by his face; all I could see was pure focus. Until he spoke.

Sometimes it was, “Ah! Good!”

Sometimes it was,  "Damn."

Sometimes I got even more, like a “Look, Melissa—look how beautiful that came out.”

At lunchtime, my dad sat in his backyard, face to the sun, fully relaxed, breathing in the Taos air.

“It’s so much better here,” he told me, “so much better than New York.” He didn’t need to say it. I already understood how connected he was to Taos—to the mountain outside his window. I had already begun to feel that way myself.

At dinner, he told jokes. For the record, my dad has been telling the same jokes for years, and he laughs every single time, so hard that no sound comes out and tears streak down his face. Usually the joke itself is not so funny, but my dad’s joyful reaction and silent hysterics always made Sherrie and me laugh until we, too, were in tears.

Soon after I arrived, Dad and Sherrie put me to work. Never mind the pregnancy, they had me tilling the yard, watering the garden, and taking care of their chickens. Never mind my lack of experience with a yard, garden, or chickens (did I mention that I came from New York City?). On one occasion, my father and I spent a half hour trying to catch an escaped chicken. It was so absurd. We could not catch that stupid chicken. Dad was in hysterics over the fact that we were being outwitted by what he not-so-affectionately referred to as a “birdbrain.”

If you haven’t gotten this yet, my father loves to laugh. And when he does, he is completely given over to it. If you haven’t gotten this either, my father loves to paint. He is so completely a part of his art that it is hard to tell where he ends and his paintings begin. They are one and the same. And most of all, my father loves Taos. It’s where he laughs and where he paints.

Every afternoon my father takes a break from painting. He naps right on the floor of his studio. He doesn’t bother going into the living room to lie on the couch. He stays right in the room with his canvas. The first time I walked in and found him lying on the floor on his back, hands resting on his belly, I thought he was dead. He was so still—so peaceful. Despite the fact that I thought he had died, it was somehow a beautiful moment.

I looked up at the painting he was working on. It was a landscape of a field, cows peacefully grazing, tire tracks marking the dusting of snow that lay on the ground. It was beautiful. It was Taos.