William Lumpkins was born on Rabbit Ears Ranch, New Mexico in 1908. While he was raised in the west he was introduced to Zen Buddhism at a young age by a local farmer who had traveled to the east. This friendship would have a profound effect on Lumpkins for his entire life and greatly influenced his approach to his art. In 1929, he enrolled at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque. It was at the university he met Peter Hurd and they spent time together sketching the southern New Mexico landscapes. Lumpkins took his first art classes at UNM and in one of the classes met the young painter Cady Wells. Cady Wells would later become known for his exquisite watercolors.
Lumpkins saw a John Marin watercolor exhibition in Taos in 1931 and after this time he proceeded to experiment in abstraction. He studied architecture at the University of Southern California and graduated from UNM in 1934. While at UNM, he met several artists including Stuart Walker and Robert Gribbroek who with Lumpkins belonged to the Transcendental Painting Group founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1938.
In 1939, he opened a private architectural firm in Santa Fe and after time in the Navy, he reestablished his firm in Santa Fe in 1946. Lumpkins received many honors for his architectural work but he continued to create his watercolors almost every day.
It is his watercolors that his best known for and a medium he mastered. Lumpkins painted with an unforced ease and spontaneity which was influenced by his reading Zen koans (small books of wise verse). He had an inner spiritual harmony that is reflected in his artwork. He was known to say that painting was the opposite discipline of the rigid tenets of architecture and an area he could be most expressive. Lumpkins is considered the most instinctive painter of the TPG group. He continued to create watercolors for decades after the TPG disbanded in 1942 in his studio home in Santa Fe.
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