Medearis explains, “I am a slow painter and devote to each painting all the time it seems to require. The whole purpose of art is excellence, and one good painting is better than 10,000 bad ones.” As a result, major paintings by the artist are scarce. Only three large works have passed through auction since his death, and Vose Galleries has handled only two, one of which was sold for a record price that still stands. Rio Chama is only the sixth Medearis painting to come through our doors and, according to his ledger, was captured a scene near Taos, New Mexico. The 31 mile long Rio Chama flows through the desert canyons of New Mexico until it reaches the Rio Grande in Mexico. Number 185 in Medearis’ ledger, noting “near Taos” [NM] ...After Pearl Harbor, Medearis assisted all three branches of the armed forces in various graphic capacities, and worked with such distinction that an admiral refused to let him formally enlist in the Army, writing that it would be impossible to replace him. During the war years he yearned to return to his art, and for two years he continued painting in his Regionalist style in a new studio in Chester, Connecticut; he showed rather successfully in New York at the Kende Galleries. His work brought acclaim, but not sufficient income, and he also began to see the magnitude of the trend away from Regionalism. The works of a fellow Benton student, Jackson Pollock, especially baffled him, but he could see that the future of American art did not include his style. Depressed at this, along with the failure of his marriage, he put away his brushes for the next ten years. He returned to the Midwest to a successful career as a salesman for the paper industry, remarried, moved to a suburb of Los Angeles, and began to rekindle his interest in art. A dealer in Maryland happened by chance to see the 1949 painting Family Reunion, and couldn’t get the work out of his head. He tried for months to find a trace of the artist, and finally contacted Thomas Hart Benton. Benton, who considered Medearis his finest pupil, gave the dealer the artist’s California address. This was the beginning of a long relationship with Philip Desind of Capricorn Galleries in Bethesda, Maryland, who showed Medearis’ work for over thirty years. With such encouragement, the artist quit his industry job in 1969 to devote his career to painting. His subjects continued to be the imagery of Midwestern Regionalism, later the Western landscape, and his style upheld his devotion to the work of his mentor, Benton. As always, he worked as slowly and patiently as needed for the perfection he sought because if there is one word to describe Medearis, it is meticulous – in his paintings, which often took months to complete – and, happily for art historians, in his record keeping. His ledger follows his entire career, from his student days in the 1940s to his death in 2001, which included an entry for his last painting, East of Lone Pine, #274. [https://www.vosegalleries.com/artists/roger-medearis/works/rio-chama#.WqrXHIXBdWY]