Ken Wolverton

By Brian D’Ambrosio

Along a dusty roadside of Cerrillos, connected weathered shacks lean into the landscape like a creature molded from the earth itself. Its walls are alive with color: horses rearing across mesas, dreamlike murals, and abstract forms that seem to vibrate with movement. Inside, brushes slant in jars, canvases are stacked against walls, and unfinished murals climb wooden planks. This is the world of Ken Wolverton, an 80-year-old artist whose life has been as itinerant and unconventional as the art he creates.

Wolverton’s fascination with art began at an improbably early age. When he was4, a relative visiting his family home set up a tiny canvas on the dining room table beneath a bare lightbulb. She painted a horse.

“The end of a brush or a pencil was magic to me,” he recalled. “It keeps going as long as your imagination’s on the end of it.”

Among nine siblings—most destined for ranching or farming—Wolvertonstood out as the child obsessed with images rather than livestock. He enjoyed the focus and freedom in the quiet of his bedroom and at the drawing board in school.

Born in Pueblo, Colorado, Wolverton’s early life was punctuated by accident and tragedy. His eldest brother, a Corsair fighter pilot, died in the South Pacific just before Wolverton’s birth. His parents separated when he was 5, and by the age of 11, after repeated brushes with mischief, he was sent to live with his older brother on a sprawling ranch in eastern Oregon. There, amid a vast desert and cattle herds, he learned to ride, to work, and to survive—a foundation for a life defined by mobility, self-reliance, and curiosity.

In 1967, Wolverton joined the Army and trained as a combat medic in Germany. It was an experience that exposed him to both discipline and chaos, shaping his later approach to life and art.

Afterward, he wandered across the U.S. and Europe, bicycling from Oxford to Edinburgh, performing with street theater troupes and collaborating on international children’s theater festivals. These years abroad, including extended time in Scotland and Corsica, would define his philosophy: art as a lens through which to experience the world fully, intimately, and without compromise.

Returning to the United States in the mid-1980s, Wolverton settled first in Portland, Oregon, before choosing New Mexico. He was drawn by its light, its history, and its openness.

“New Mexico is not like the rest of America,” he said. “It’s the only place I wanted to live. The sun, the landscape—it feeds everything.”

Here, he began transforming the conglomerate of humble roadside shacks into a personal museum of thought and memory.

Walking through the site at the intersection of Goldmine Road and NM Hwy. 14, it is impossible not to sense Wolverton’s eccentricity—he calls it “crazy old man art”—but also the precision and deliberation behind every brushstroke and installation. Horses, abstract forms, and vibrant colors occupy every surface, a chronicle of decades spent observing both human and natural life.

“One in 10 people who stop (by) enjoy it,” he noted wryly, acknowledging the selective nature of public engagement. Wolverton has no fixed studio hours for public visits. However, for him, the work is less about approval than existence: “This place documents my passage through time, through the earth, through the world. Who else is going to tell my story?”

The shack is more than a studio; it is a philosophical statement. “This is my private view of the world. How it turns out, it turns out,” Wolvertonsaid, reflecting on the freedom of creating without the constraints of galleries or commercial pressures.

Visitors encounter a world in miniature, meticulously curated, yet wildly idiosyncratic. It is a place where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, where every wall is a record of experience.

Wolverton’s approach is grounded in observation and participation. Over decades, he has traveled, collaborated, and taught mural painting across New Mexico—from Albuquerque to Farmington, Roswell to Santa Fe—always bringing others into the act of creation.

Yet, in Cerrillos, he works entirely for himself. Every mural, every painted horse, every abstract flourish is a statement of self: a reckoning with the passage of time, the inevitability of change, and the necessity of expression.

Visitors often remark on the raw power of his vision. The shacks themselves, some repaired, some crumbling, carry their own stories, evidence of weather, labor, and human touch. Within them, Wolverton’s work is both intimate and expansive. He layers color and form like a sculptor, treating space itself as a canvas. Even the objects he leaves in place—the scraps, the discarded brushes, the remnants of past projects—are deliberate, part of a personal archive that chronicles not only his creative journey but the passage of the earth and his own life.

Wolverton’s philosophy embraces imperfection, risk, and joy. “It’s all about keeping it moving,” he said. “The world doesn’t wait. Art doesn’t wait. You move with itor you stand still and miss everything.”

Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of New Mexico Eccentrics, a compilation of more than 40 stories of unusual and offbeat personalities, those devoted to their own craft, originality, and creativity, including Ken Wolverton.