Tumbleweeds honors the late David Boyd Sr. in art show

When Sara Robinson of The Marketplace approached Osiris Navarro, co-owner of Tumbleweeds Diner in Magdalena, with a collection of 15 works of art by Navajo artist David Boyd Sr., she had no idea that she was about to make history for the late artist and his family.

The more Navarro looked into Boyd Sr., the more she discovered just how little was publicly known about him with no mention online or in books. Instead, she began talking to her customers and piece by piece began to sleuth out a picture of this prolific artist who spent most of his life working from his home in Alamo.

In talking to her neighbors, Navarro found that David Boyd Sr. was born August 22, 1947 in Crown Point, NM, and served in the Vietnam War where he was awarded a Purple Heart. When he returned to the states, he met and married Ester with whom he had two daughters, Vivica and Veronica, and one son, David Boyd Jr.

The family eventually moved to Ester’s home on the Alamo Navajo Reservation. Later in life he purchased property in San Pedro, NM, where he spent his final years before passing away in 2024. He currently has 60 grandchildren.

Navarro learned that no matter where he was living, Boyd Sr. painted from memory, creating pieces in acrylic, pottery and sand painting, as well as completing the murals inside El Camino restaurant in Socorro and the Socorro County Magistrate Courthouse. She decided to take what she had learned and reach out to anyone who might want to lend their own pieces to create an art show at Tumbleweeds dedicated to the artist, whom she felt never got the recognition he deserved while he was alive. This will be the first show to ever be recorded, and his son said he is beyond proud of his father, and believes his father would be proud, too.

The complete showing, which will have around 25 pieces, is slated to open Easter weekend with art ranging from 1976 to 2006. The oldest piece in the show is on loan from a museum in Oklahoma during a time when Boyd Sr. was living in Missouri. It shows a red mesa and landscape that prompted his son, Boyd Jr., to wonder if he painted it out of homesickness.

“I can’t believe he did this many paintings, and I’m sure there is a lot more,” Boyd Jr. said. He said he remembered his dad telling him that he would doodle as a kid when he had nothing else to do, and also the day about five years ago when his father told him he wasn’t going to paint anymore. His eyes were failing him and after decades of creating, he laid down his brushes. “I thought he was messing around, but I never saw him paint again after that.”

Boyd Jr. said he grew up learning to paint by watching his dad and helping him sell his work from the bed of their pickup truck in the ‘80s. He plans to have some of his own work for sale in the upcoming show and said that art is a great was to escape reality.

“A piece of work that you did from your heart, nobody can take that away from you,” Boyd Jr. said.

The pieces on display at Tumbleweeds show the life of an artist and viewers can see how much his style changed over the years.

“I just felt it was important because just in passing with people, it seems like he was a really well known person, artist, friend, and there was just no record of him online whatsoever. And for someone whose work is so prominent in this county, I think it should be recognized,” Navarro said.