While managing her successful scientific illustration business, Kriebel Arts, in the Boston area, Nancy Kriebel studied drawing and painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. After moving to the Southwest she received her MFA degree in studio art from the University of Arizona, Tucson. She has been painting for 25 years.

Her early years working and studying anthropology, first at University of New Mexico and then at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, helped create her love for living in and painting the southwestern landscape. After moving to Santa Fe, Kriebel has studied plein air painting with Anita Louise West, Albert Handel, Ann Templeton and Louisa McElwain. She has taught plein air workshops at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Artisans, and taught 3 years with the adult education program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe. She has participated in the Plein Air New Mexico paint outs and Gallery in Bernalillo, and the Santa Fe Botanical Garden juried show at the Selby Fleetwood Gallery in Santa Fe.

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Kriebel says:

©Nancy Kriebel-All rights reserved

"I create plein air landscapes that reflect the bold shapes, glorious colors and intense contrasts of the incredible Southwest arena and paint the delicate, subtle, multilayered details and mysterious spaces I find there.

My landscapes are painted in oil and are almost entirely created outdoors or 'plein air' as did the Impressionists of the late 19th Century. I often use palette knives as well as brushes to capture the lush textures and boldness of the rhythms I find. Subjects that intrigue me are chosen by their interesting combinations of shapes, colors and shadows that I find in the countryside as well as in local scenes of churches and architecture. My work is about the mysterious transitions from the detailed arroyo to the mountain, the smooth river or pond into the trees, the path or road to the unknown place."