Carl Faber Oil on Canvas — Indigenous Madonna on Stone Outcrop, Gila NM Period, Signed

An oil on stretched canvas by Carl Faber, depicting a robed woman in the posture of a Marian apparition — arms open in welcome, eyes lowered, standing barefoot atop a cairn of pale stones. The figure carries distinctly Indigenous features and long dark hair beneath a soft gray-blue mantle: the iconography of Our Lady reimagined through a devotional lens rooted in the living cultures of the region. A gray cloak fastened with a purple clasp falls over a cream gown belted in violet, the drapery rendered in patient tonal modeling against a warm ochre ground. The composition reads as a study for a sculptural shrine figure — the smooth, statue-like treatment of flesh and cloth suggests a carved santo translated to canvas, the figure frozen in the same beatific stillness you find in the whitewashed niches of Doña Ana County churches.

Faber's training as a sign painter gave him a command of the single, unhesitating mark — and it shows here in the drapery folds, each crease laid in with confidence rather than reworked passage by passage. The warm ochre field behind the figure carries the compressed chromatic sensitivity that defined his mature work: less a background than a radiant ground, the color pressing inward from the edges as though lit from behind the canvas. Signed C. FABER at lower right. The painting is unframed; the staged lifestyle image shows it framed for presentation purposes only.

Carl Faber was an American painter who spent the better part of his working life in the desert, developing a body of work rooted in sustained, first-hand observation of the natural world. He studied commercial art at a vocational school in Delaware and worked professionally in sign painting, metalwork, business displays, and silkscreening in Florida and California before redirecting his energies entirely toward easel painting. In 1972, Faber moved to the East Mojave desert to focus on landscape painting, studying the desert terrain that would become his hallmark subject for more than three decades. His artwork and austere desert lifestyle attracted attention from local and national press during the 1980s, and organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Mojave Road brought a steady stream of visitors and buyers to his remote studio. It was in the East Mojave that Faber developed his philosophy of field painting — a rigorous commitment to painting directly from nature rather than from photographic reference, a practice he defended on both technical and philosophical grounds.

Faber illustrated his partner Adrienne Knute's botanical study Plants of the East Mojave, published in 1991 and reprinted in 2002, demonstrating both his draftsmanship and his deep engagement with the Mojave ecosystem. He and Adrienne first came to Gila Hot Springs, New Mexico, in 2004 — originally seeking a winter home — but fell in love with the place and made it their permanent residence. It is from this final chapter of his life, based in the Gila wilderness near Silver City, that the present work originates. Faber was known as a committed teacher who accepted students on a non-commercial basis, preferring to pass on his technical knowledge and philosophical outlook to those he judged capable of genuine dedication. A notice from the ACE Studio Art Gallery in Silver City confirmed his passing; the date has not yet been independently verified in published sources. His work remains held in private collections across New Mexico and beyond.

The fusion of Catholic Marian iconography with Indigenous physiognomy has deep roots in New Mexico devotional art — from the retablo tradition through 20th-century painters working the same spiritual and cultural terrain. Faber brings to that tradition the eye of a dedicated field painter: the figure is observed rather than merely conceived, the palette arrived at rather than assumed. For collectors working at the intersection of New Mexico religious art, Indigenous portraiture, and serious mid-century American realism, this canvas occupies a genuinely uncommon position.

CONDITION

Good overall with no remarkable damage. The painting is unframed, with grommeted lacing holes running the length of one tacking edge from a prior mounting. Surface is sound with even tone across the field.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall: 30" H × 17" W × 3/4" D
• Medium: Oil on stretched canvas
• Signature: C. FABER, lower right
• Unframed