Taos Art Colony: The Taos art colony was a groundbreaking association of European trained painters that collected around the visually spectacular Taos Pueblo in the North American southwest. The founding members fostered the emergence of a major school of American painting. Unlike other 'schools' or styles that emerged around the turn of the 19th century in the United States, the early Taos Colony artists were not united under a single manifesto or aesthetic modus, but equally lured by the stunning and, as yet, foreign environs. Founding members of the Colony: Bert Geer Phillips, Ernest L. Blumenschein, Joseph Henry Sharp, W. Herbert Dunton, E. Irving Couse and Oscar E. Berninghaus.
Tempera: The technique of painting with pigments bound in a water-soluble emulsion, such as water and egg yolk, or an oil-in-water emulsion such as oil and a whole egg. Some tempera paints are made with an artificial emulsion using gum or glue. Traditionally applied to a rigid support such as a wood panel, the paint dries to a hard film.
Transavantgarde: Italian critic, Bonito Achille Oliva, coined this term for art-making that rejected the tenents of conceptual art and attempted to bring emotion— specifically the joy of creation—back into the process. By reviving figuration and symbolism, this group of artists, who came to prominence in the 80s, aimed to restore myth, mystery, and magic to contemporary art.