Rod Goebel was one of the most accomplished younger Taos painters of the late twentieth century, a Texas-born, New Mexico-trained post-Impressionist whose vigorous brushwork, vivid color, and disciplined plein-air practice made him a founding member of the contemporary Taos Six and a respected teacher of his generation before his early death.
Rod Goebel (1946–1993) was an American Post-Impressionist painter associated for most of his working life with Taos, New Mexico. Born in Austin, Texas, he was educated at the University of New Mexico and the Colorado Institute of Art before settling in Taos, where he built a body of work concentrated on the Southwestern landscape, portraiture, still life, and figure painting. His practice was characterized by vigorous brushwork, vivid color, and a strong commitment to direct painting from observation.
He was a founding member of the contemporary group of working Taos painters known as the Taos Six, and was elected an Academician of the National Academy of Western Art. His paintings were featured in Southwest Art, Artists of the Rockies, and other principal publications of late-twentieth-century Western American painting, and he became a respected teacher of younger landscape painters in the later years of his career. His paintings have continued to circulate steadily through galleries in the Southwest in the decades since his death.