Ila Mae McAfee was born 1897 in the small ranching community of Sargents in southwestern Colorado near Gunnison. She died in 1995 in Pueblo, Colorado, where she moved after leaving her adobe home in Taos, New Mexico in late summer 1993.
She was raised on her family's ranch south of Gunnison, and attended Logan County School, riding ten miles each way to school. In 1916, she graduated from Gunnison High School and then spent time in Los Angeles at the West Lake School before enrolling in Western State College (then a 2-year school) in 1917. After graduating in 1919, she went to Chicago and studied painting
Ila McAfee
(1897-1995)
with the noted muralist James E. McBurney until 1924. Training at the Taft Studio with other art students, she obtained a substantial knowledge of sculpture and by assisting them when their work included animals.
During 1925 and 1926 she continued her studies in New York at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. In 1926 she married Elmer Page Turner, a fellow artist whom she had met at McBurney's studio. The couple honeymooned in Taos and moved there permanently in 1928. They built the White Horse Studio on Armory Place, two blocks from the Plaza, and settled in for a lifetime of painting (with occasional forays into the decorative arts).
In addition to over a thousand easel paintings, which are represented in numerous public and private collections, Ila's murals were placed in the post offices of Clifton, TX, Cordell and Edmond, OK and Gunnison, CO, as well as in the public library of Greeley, CO. She was a particular friend of the noted Western art collector, Lutcher Stark and painted fifteen portraits of Lutcher's longhorns at 'Shangri-La.' She also received every award that could be won at the New Mexico State Fair professional juried show.
