From carpentry to fine art, Santa Fe painter was ‘brilliant and focused’

Paul Steiner’s meandering path to the art world started with 35 years as a carpenter, a few architecture classes and a bad back.

But once he decided he was going to try his hand at painting full time, Steiner never looked back. A largely self-taught devotee of realism, he fully immersed himself in his work — typically oil paintings that prominently featured wild and remote New Mexico landscapes and that later sold at galleries on Canyon Road and elsewhere.

“He was very brilliant and focused,” said longtime friend and fellow artist Eli Levin of Dixon. “He zeroed in, and he found his niche within a few years.”

Paul Steiner

Paul Steiner

Steiner died Aug. 7 after a struggle with cancer, according to longtime partner Vickie Gabin, to whom Steiner was “happily unmarried for 31 years.” He was 73 years old.

Steiner grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side but had a connection to New Mexico from a young age.

His father, writer Stan Steiner, took his son on frequent trips to the Land of Enchantment, eventually relocating permanently after a divorce and remarriage, Gabin said. When Paul Steiner was a teenager, his grandmother prevailed upon him to build her a small home on the land Stan Steiner bought “to keep him off the streets, basically, and keep him out of trouble,” Gabin said.

The project taught Paul Steiner how to build with adobe, and “room by room, it grew,” said Gabin, who lives today in the house near Museum Hill.

Steiner became a carpenter, working mainly on residential homes. He often sketched for his projects, and in 2000, when he was in his late 40s, Steiner enrolled in architecture classes at the University of New Mexico, moving with Gabin to Albuquerque for a couple of years while he pursued his studies.

Steiner ultimately decided architecture was not for him. But in the meantime he had been drawing regularly for his classes and enjoying himself. Gabin said Steiner took a couple of art classes and went to some drawing groups.

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Paintings in the studio of Santa Fe artist Paul Steiner.

“He would tell you himself that his early stuff was really bad,” she said, but he kept at it.

After the couple returned to Santa Fe, Steiner went back to construction, though mostly on smaller jobs at that point. Then, like so many others in the building world, his back went out.

“He said, ‘I’ve got to stop working like this,’ ” Gabin said.

Steiner told her he wanted to try his hand as a professional artist. Gabin, a water rights lawyer, was making good money at the time, giving Steiner the support he needed to give it a try.

“I was astonished at how hard he worked all the time and how disciplined he was,” she said. “He was disciplined in many ways, but the painting, I quite admired him.”

Levin, who describes himself as a “social realist,” said he first met Steiner 25 years ago when he hired Steiner to do some work on his studio. They bonded over a number of commonalities. Both grew up in New York with writer fathers; both were Jewish; both ended up in New Mexico. As artists, they both preferred realism to abstract art, although Levin focused on social scenes while Steiner identified strongly with Southwestern landscapes.

Steiner often spent long periods of time out in nature, soaking up the ambiance and atmosphere, Levin said. Steiner often made quick sketches of things he saw, then returned to his studio, where he painted scenes in their entirety, often from memory.

He often used a limited palette of oil paints, mixing them to obtain the earthy hues that appeared in his paintings, Levin said.

Stephen Parise, the founder and director of Big Happy gallery in Santa Fe, which showed a collection of Steiner’s work late last year, said his use of color stood out.

Steiner painting

Los Ojitos Cliffs (2024, oil on panel, 16×12 inches) by Santa Fe artist Paul Steiner

“When you see landscapes of New Mexico … the colors tend to be, like, quite bright and arbitrary in a way,” Parise said. “But Paul really kind of kept them down to … what he saw, how he saw them.”

Steiner’s landscapes often feature figures as well, often looking forlorn or isolated.

“He would put these wandering people in these desolate landscapes,” Levin said.

After finding a kiln on sale at a secondhand store for about $150 some years ago, Steiner installed it and started sculpting figures to use as models for his paintings, Gabin said.

“He just went to town,” she said. “He started modeling figures … to be able to shine light on them from different angles.”

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Sculpted figures line shelves in the studio of Santa Fe artist Paul Steiner. Steiner used figures as models for various paintings.

Steiner was typically reserved and introverted, and when his work started selling at galleries, Gabin said he had trouble talking with the people who showed up to see it.

“In fact, when he started showing on Canyon Road, he’d be standing outside the gallery not mingling, and he just didn’t know what to say,” Gabin said. “I said something like, ‘Introduce yourself, [say] thank you for coming and ask them a question about themselves.’ ”

Steiner’s last show, at Big Happy gallery, drew a huge, bustling turnout — a “jolly affair,” Gabin said, and, Levin said, a successful one.

Parise said his primary interest in artists is not their resumes, and he found Steiner’s straightforward, true-to-life approach to his work refreshing and moving.

“He just had a natural talent of sketching and drawing and being a draftsman,” Parise said. “He had a great natural talent.”