ENIGMA: The Work of George "Skipper" Captain

SUN & DUST presents a very special show at Relay: ENIGMA: The Work of George "Skipper" Captain. Works 1975–2023.

Opening reception Thursday, September 10, 5–8 PM. On view at Relay through September 26, 2026.

ENIGMA is the first exhibition of a Santa Fe painter whose art practice of more than four decades was conducted thoroughly on his own terms. Working almost entirely outside public view, Captain (b. 1945, Manhattan, NY; d. 2025, Santa Fe, NM), known to all as "Skipper," built a practice in unbound dry pigment on paper, alongside charcoal drawing, oil painting, and material work incorporating ground soil, dried grass, and salvaged metal. He had no formal training. His education came from books and from exhibition catalogues carried back from New York in the 1970s.

The exhibition presents more than 150 works across two locations, SUN & DUST and RELAY, the majority of which have never been shown. Captain worked in dry pigment, unbound and pressed or rubbed directly into heavy paper, a method that permits little correction. Some of that pigment was purchased. Some was gathered from roadsides north and west of Santa Fe and ground by hand. Many of the sheets present two fields of color and the boundary between them. Panels built from found matter and compelling detritus carry the earliest dates in the abstract archive, and representational charcoals and oils of considerable skill round out the exhibition.

Captain showed publicly only once, at LewAllen Galleries on Galisteo St. in the mid 1990s. This exhibition by SUN & DUST is the only showing of his work since that time.

Special selected works are also on view at SUN & DUST, September 2 through September 30, 2026.

→ See the special showing of works at SUN & DUST

RELAY, 2873 All Trades Road, Studio B, Santa Fe.