Voices of Experience - Albert Handell

Mother Tree Pastel 16 x 20”

I didn’t expect and was pleasantly surprised by Albert Handell’s phone call the same evening that I had emailed him asking if he would be interested in allowing me to interview him for The Artist’s Road. After returning from a painting trip to Santa Fe, John and I were interested in interviewing an artist whom we had both admired for years and whose work exemplifies the beauty of the northern New Mexico landscape.

His quick response is indicative of his love of not only painting, but teaching and our conversation was both enlightening and educational. He is a “born” artist and found the precursor to his chosen medium of pastel in chalks with which he would draw on the sidewalks of his childhood home in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at both the High School of Industrial Arts and the Art Students League in New York. His studies continued in Paris, where he lived for four years painting from the model at L’Ecoloe de la Gra…