Ol’ Max Evans Tells Literary Stories in Paintings and Drawings

By Johnny D. Boggs | Wild West  | 6 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

It was Crumbo who told Evans to have some limited prints made of his work.

“I was barely selling, just had enough to starve on, and Woody told me if I went to see this master printer in Taos Pueblo and have some prints made, I could sell those as limited edition numbered prints and I could peddle those and that would help until I started to sell. And he was exactly right.”

The prints still sell. A recent set went for $1,000 at an auction in Cimarron, New Mexico.

“Of course, I was so naive, I think I sold the first 150 without any numbers on them,” he says. “I started numbering them at 151.”

Other paintings followed. Working cowboy scenes such as Moment of Truth, painted with a pallet knife, and a painting of his story One-Eyed Sky, which “I traded for a bunch of worthless mining stock.” He did landscapes such as The Lonesome Land, The Lonely Place, and The Edge of Taos. But mostly, nocturnal scenes that became his trademark, such as Meeting by Moonlight and Ghost Rider in a Ghost Town.

“I like the night,” Evans says. “I like moon shadows. There’s a mystery in it, a wonder in the moon shadows. And some of the greatest fun I’ve ever had has been in the moon shadows.”

Eventually, Evans’s literary career took off, and he put aside the pallet knife, the oils, the watercolors. “I chose writing, and I’m glad I did,” he says. “There were stories already eating at me, that I knew I had to write.”

Stories like My Pardner, Shadow of Thunder, Xavier’s Folly, Bluefeather Fellini, and — his one historical novel — Faraway Blue, about buffalo soldiers pursuing the legendary Apache Nana.

Yet now, Evans is returning to painting. “I want to concentrate on short stories, which has always been my first love, and articles, and painting,” he says. “There are a lot of similarities in painting and writing. You’re telling some story of yourself. ‘Here’s the way the sun shines off a bluff or a cloud in my vision.’ Those kinds of stories don’t have to have plots. They’re complete within themselves. I’m just thankful I’m going to get another crack at (painting) 1021 years later.”

Some of Evans’s drawings and paintings have been printed in Slim Randles’ biography, Ol’ Max Evans: The First Thousand Years, as well as Evans’ collection of articles, essays and fiction, For the Love of a Horse, both published by the University of New Mexico Press.

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