Sherrie McGraw by Melissa A Leffel

Sherrie McGraw was born in Oklahoma of Irish-Catholic-Cherokee descent. She is one of seven children from a family obsessed with Golf. Her father, Gerv, owned a Pro shop and many of her siblings are serious athletes or coaches. Sherrie is not a golfer but has still managed to make excellent use of the discarded golf clubs from her father’s shop.

When I first moved into Sherrie and my father’s guesthouse, I thought I had hit the jackpot. It was small, but beautiful—a sweet little adobe tucked into the mountains. Right outside my door was Sherrie’s garden, overflowing with roses, broccoli, raspberries, cucumber, tomatoes, and squash, all thriving in the merciless desert earth. I innocently mentioned to Sherrie that she was going to need a bigger garden soon. Silly me.

A few days later, Sherrie was showing me how to use a motorized push-tiller. She made it look easy, scooting around the side yard like lightning, deftly maneuvering what I considered a fairly intimidating piece of farming equipment.

“How do I know where to stop?” I asked nervously.

“Oh, I marked off the boundaries with clubs,” she told me.

“Clubs?” I cautiously ventured.

“Golf clubs. I cut the bottoms off to make stakes for the garden,” she explained.

“I see.” I started to move the tiller forward.

Two minutes later, Sherrie and I were chasing the tiller, which had decided that it didn’t like boundaries. To further clarify this, it ate two of the golf clubs, turning them into mangled pieces of metal (tiller yard art?) before heading across the road to test the boundaries of someone else’s land.

For the record, I am five foot nine inches. Sherrie is tiny. She could fit in my pocket. Against all logic, she has the strength of a bear. She retrieved the tiller from the neighbor’s yard (while it was still trucking along at an impressive clip) and finished my job. This time, the tiller stayed within its boundaries. It knew better than to try to get away when Sherrie was in charge.

Outside of the garden, there is another place where Sherrie thrives: her studio. Walking into Sherrie’s studio is like being shot straight into the heart of an artist. Vases and T’ang horses sit patiently in corners, waiting. Rolls of canvas line the walls, climbing toward the ceiling. The smell of turpentine (one that has become a part of my sensory database) envelops every corner of the room, including the centerpiece: Sherrie’s easel, which stands alone, throne-like, flanked by its guards—a palette and an empty coffee can filled with paintbrushes.

The ever-present Taos sunlight falls in muted blocks from the studio's high north windows, but, ironically, does not actually light up the space. Sherrie does that. Despite her inclination to dress entirely in black, she illuminates a room with her intensity, equal parts energy and focus. As a result, watching her paint is a lesson in paradoxes. Her body is still, but her eyes, revealingly expressive, are working, helping her mind process what exactly is happening on the canvas, or, even more accurately, what needs to be happening on the canvas. Her mind is always in gear, ready for the next step.

 When she is not painting, Sherrie is almost always in motion. She is able to multi-task at almost everything. Almost. She can cook a vegan meal for ten people while holding a focused conversation. She can paint a delicate still-life of a light pink rose bent gently over its vase while discussing the state of the world. She cannot, however, talk on the phone while doing anything else. It’s one of my favorite quirks about her. I could, quite easily, rob her blind when she is on the phone--walk out with her kitchen table. Sherrie likes live conversation. The phone messes her up—it’s a live person, but once removed. She is very real and very grounded and she likes everything around her to be that way, too.

Through her paintings, Sherrie teaches us that art is a process, just as nature is a process. While Taos is a place of great calm and beauty, it is not for the weak at heart. It takes a certain type of person to appreciate Taos, with its laissez-faire lifestyle, quirky residents, lack of natural water sources, and physical isolation. It takes someone like…Sherrie.

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.

Taos Artists

As it turns out, my first two published pieces of writing are about my father and my step-mom, Sherrie. A Taos photographer, Paul O'Connor, has put together a book of photos of Taos artists. Each artist had to find someone to write an essay that connected the artist to Taos, all through a personal experience between the writer and the artist. My father chose me. Then, when Sherrie's writer was unable to complete her story, she asked me to write it. In the next few days, I'll post each of the essays. The book will be published in the spring.

I'm so honored.