There is a framed check on the wall inside Artisan Santa Fe. Georgia O'Keeffe wrote it — made out for art supplies, the same art supplies you can still pull off those shelves today. It has never been cashed. The staff treats it less like a trophy and more like a fact of life: of course she shopped here. Where else was she going to go?
Bill Banta and Jack Young founded Artisan in 1975 out of an old adobe on Canyon Road — the street that was already the nervous center of Santa Fe's art world. The city's creative economy ran on turpentine and ambition back then, and Banta and Young built the store that fed both. The lore accumulated fast. R.C. Gorman was said to be a regular. O'Keeffe's check went up on the wall. The place earned a reputation that spread well past city limits: the art supply source of the Southwest.
Paul Bell came on in 1985. He was hired to work the floor, and within months he had met Diane. That's the part of the story the Bells tell without being asked — the better origin story, if you want one. A man takes a job at an art supply store and finds his life's work and his partner in the same building.
When Bill Banta died in 1994, Paul and two coworkers bought a minority stake in the store, keeping it intact and independent through the decades when big-box chains were swallowing every category retailer they could reach. Artisan held its ground. In 2024, Diane became majority owner, and she and Paul bought out their remaining partners. Their son Michael now runs day-to-day operations. The family didn't acquire a business — they grew into one over forty years.
The store today is not a museum piece. Walk into the Cerrillos Road location and the floor is working retail — more than 50,000 products organized under hanging department banners: Drawing, Oils, Acrylics, Watercolors, Books, Portfolios. A wooden mannequin presides over the center aisle. Rolls of Claessens primed linen hang on a rack at $39.89 a yard, ready to be cut. A sign near the easels in the back reads Workshop Participants Only — the store rents classroom space and hosts classes, which means on any given weekday the place functions as much as a working studio as a shop.
That dual identity — retailer and studio anchor — is what makes Artisan harder to replace than its address on Cerrillos Road suggests. The store maintains a community board, publishes ARTeNews, runs an employee gallery, and keeps a calendar of events. None of that shows up in an Amazon cart. The product selection in the physical store also runs considerably deeper than the website implies; the company says outright that many items available on the floor are not listed online. The minimum for web or call-in orders is $40, which tells you something about who the store is actually built for: working artists buying in quantity, not browsers filling a single tube of cadmium red.
Santa Fe has always had more working artists per capita than most American cities feel comfortable admitting. The museums fill the itineraries. The galleries on Canyon Road get the coverage. But the store that actually keeps those artists painting, drawing, and printing has been sitting on Cerrillos Road since 1975, doing the unglamorous, essential work of keeping shelves stocked.
Not everything available in the store appears on the website — come in person if you're serious about your materials. The phone number is (505) 954-4179 and the staff answer it. Hours run Monday through Saturday, 9:00 am to 5:30 pm, and Sunday noon to 5:00 pm.
Santa Fe has no shortage of ways to spend money on beautiful things — the independents on Galisteo and scattered across the city make for genuinely good browsing. But if someone asks where to buy art supplies in this city, the answer hasn't changed since 1975: Artisan, at 2601 Cerrillos Road. For painters, printmakers, illustrators, and students who need more than a craft-store aisle, there is no real second option. O'Keeffe's uncashed check on the wall is just the most elegant proof that this was always true.