E.L. Vint Blackburn Abstract Artist
and so much more

Born in Iuka, Illinois, 1932, E. L. Vint Blackburn epitomized the song “How ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”  Only in his case it was Kaesong. After returning home from the Korean War, and realizing that he wasn't cut out for rural farm life, he decided to pursue his luck in acting and art, initially moving out to Colorado, then, Prescott, Arizona, and finally to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It was on the dusty unpaved street known as Canyon Road in 1965, where he, along with his business partner Bob Young, founded the now iconic El Farol restaurant in an old law office. It was here where he began to sell his artwork in ernest inbetween wining and dining his colorful clientele. 

 

From converted barns he and his wife had bought in Tesuque, he began producing sculpture, abstract paintings and collages. After a few years, he gave up the restaurant business and devoted, his full attention to his three favorite passions: art, building adobe homes, and travel. 

 

There was a clear evolution to his art over the years. Many of his initial works, often done in oil, paint, were dark and somber, while the style he developed living in Hawaii, was brighter and more playful. In Barcelona, he manifested a more graphic flair, perhaps influenced by the likes of Miró and Mariscal. He was invigorated by the art for the 1992 Olympics and incorporated a lot of the color and symbolism of the games into his work. 

 

Back in Santa Fe, where he continued to spend the bulk of his time, he explored iconography and develop a following making and selling primitive New Mexico style furniture and crosses. As the consummate showman, he love to tell people, "I have this little old New Mexican man in the mountains, who make these for me." Since he was in his 70s at the time, and he had spent more than half his life in Santa Fe by then, there was more than a little truth in the story. 

 

In his last, and most prolific faze, he broadened his style. While living in a renovated warehouse, converted into an artist studio, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he took to painting everything (literally). He started painting found objects with bright colors and interesting patterns. He painted the backs of jackets, trunks, benches that he made, and any canvas, board, or solid flat objects he could find. There's a little doubt he would've painted his family if they would have stayed still for any length of time. It was during this. He had a very successful one-man show at Double Dog Studios in Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

 

His art can literally be found on walls across the globe.