{"id":136330,"date":"2026-06-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/longtime-mancos-artist-to-sell-southwestern-paintings-at-millies\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T15:00:00","slug":"longtime-mancos-artist-to-sell-southwestern-paintings-at-millies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/longtime-mancos-artist-to-sell-southwestern-paintings-at-millies\/","title":{"rendered":"Longtime Mancos artist to sell southwestern paintings at Millie’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mancos-based
Mancos-based artist Lynne Clay, hailing from Michigan, fell in love with Southwest Colorado\u2019s landscape. She tries to capture its beauty with watercolors, acrylics and ink. (Courtesy of Lynne Clay)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Lynne Clay, who\u2019s been documenting Southwest Colorado with a paintbrush since the 1970s, will be selling a variety of her watercolor, acrylic and ink works at Millie\u2019s, a cafe and restaurant in Mancos, in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell in love with the whole area around here and started painting,\u201d Clay said. \u201cAnd I especially love the Mancos area and McElmo Canyon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her work ranges from fantastical landscapes of deserts complete with grazing horses and cotton candy clouds to detailed renderings of the Puebloan ruins at Mesa Verde National Park.<\/p>\n

Clay has also met a collection of renowned artists, including Georgia O\u2019Keeffe and Navajo artist Joe Toledo, who turned her on to the concept of using rainwater for watercolors. She also taught art classes in Mancos and at Battle Rock Charter School.<\/p>\n

She said she is particularly enamored with McElmo Canyon where she and her late husband raised their children.<\/p>\n

\"Artist
Artist Lynne Clay had special permits to paint portions of Mesa Verde National Park and Ute Mountain Tribal Park. \u201cI got to explore and do a lot of stuff that most people don\u2019t get to do,\u201d Clay said. (Courtesy of Lynne Clay)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Her current project involves painting the view from their old home, which was the last estate of George Kelly, a Western horticulturist and founder of the Denver Botanic Gardens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started painting the geological fault that comes down from the Ute. And I\u2019m working on that right now. It\u2019s a great canvas painting,\u201d Clay said.<\/p>\n

Previously, she made her living crafting what she says must have been millions of colorful paper earrings out of her old Cortez gallery, but has since retired that interest.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200b\u201dPeople really liked them, so I went ahead and did that, and I said, \u2018Well, they\u2019re just not ready for art,\u2019\u201d Clay said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

But, hopefully, now they are. Millie\u2019s, located at 101 Railroad Ave., designated a wall for Clay to display more than 20 of her mixed media works for sale. She also sells prints.<\/p>\n

Her prints range between $3 and $300 and she\u2019s still pricing her originals. She said she offers reasonably priced prints people can afford.<\/p>\n

Clay said creating art inspired by Southwest Colorado fulfills a childhood dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in Michigan, but we were out here in Colorado every summer,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to paint it, so I just started painting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

avanderveen@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynne Clay spent years crafting paper earrings. Now she\u2019s fulfilling childhood dreams with a paintbrush<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[363,431,28,83,29,6419],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-136330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-arts","tag-business-general","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter","tag-tj-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136330"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=136330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}