Image of the Day, April 29, 2012

By Donna Poutlon

“I decided very early that I would be an American painter. I travelled the county over, and the West appealed to me. There is no phase of landscape in which we are not richer, more varied and interesting… ” – Thomas Moran

Thomas Moran, watercolor. Credit: Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts.Traveling with John Wesley Powell during the summer of 1873, Thomas Moran painted Colburn’s Butte. Powell often named lakes and mountains after people on his expeditions. He named the peak after J.E. Colburn a writer for the New York Times who was travelling with the survey expedition to record his impressions of the southwest for a chapter in William Cullen Bryan’s Picturesque American.

Photograph of a Paiute Youth, Thomas Moran, and J.E. Colburn, 1873. Credit: Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts.

Image of the Day, February 18, 2012

By Donna Poulton

Now in her eighties, Edie Roberson (b.1929) is creating the most compelling work of her career, blending realistic landscapes with absurdist and postmodern themes. Still employing the precision of her prior hyper-real technique, her most recent compositions position prosaic children’s toys in southern Utah’s remotest deserts.

Edie Roberson, Annie’s Trip to Southern Utah, 2005, acrylic on board, 27 x 36 in. Private Collection. Credit: Edieroberson.com Little Orphan Annie in Annie’s Trip to Southern Utah is on a road trip and she looks absurdly happy on her motorcycle, exhaust blowing from the tailpipe as she speeds through the desert wilderness. The intertext from the comic strip informs the viewer, however, that she is in danger -- the fictional character, Annie, was always being stalked by dangerous characters. The viewer brings that knowledge to the reading of the text/painting. The dark storm clouds on the horizon are met by vast uninhabited stretches of nameless red rock desert.

Image of the Day, December 8, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"I have in many places departed form the severe ascetic style ... Under ordinary circumstances, the ascetic discipline is necessary. Give the imagination an inch, and it is apt to take an ell, and the fundamental requirement of scientific method - accuracy of statement - is imperiled. But in the Grand Canyon district there is no such danger. The stimulants which are demoralizing elsewhere are necessary here to exalt the mind sufficiently to comprehend the sublimity of the subjects. Their sublimity has in fact been hitherto underrated." - Clarence Dutton

William Henry Holmes was employed by Clarence Dutton as a cartographer and sketch artist for his U. S. Geological Survey of the Grand Canyon District. This is a chromolithograph based on a sketch made by Holmes during his visits to the Grand Canyon District, which included Zion National Park.

Credit: Utah’s Canyons and Deserts

William Henry Holmes, Smithsonian Butte—Valley of the Virgen [sic], chromolitograph based on a sketch for Clarence Edward Dutton’s The Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, delivered to Congress in 1881. 

Painting of the Day, December 6, 2011

I see the world in terms of a balance between cosmos and chaos. Painting for me is the process of continually seeking, and attempting to work out, that balance. I don't feel it necessary for viewers to "know" my personal symbols in order to feel that my work -- if it is successful in blending chaos and cosmos into a beautiful whole -- has a spiritual base.  – Clay Wagstaff

Credit: Clay Wagstaff

Clay Wagstaff, Somewhere Between Here and There, c. 2005, oil on panel 36 x 36, private collection.

Color, Form and Light: Milford Zornes Comes Home

by Donna Poulton

Horses Red Canyon by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

From Milford Zornes by Gordon T. McClelland and Milford Zornes, Hillcrest Press, Inc.

By the time James Milford Zornes (1908-2008) moved to Utah in 1963, he had a long history of successful exhibitions, had traveled the world, was elected president of the California Watercolor Society and had established an international teaching reputation. He and his wife had not planned to move to southern Utah, but they found the property for sale while making an impromptu visit to Edith Hamlin at the home that she and Maynard Dixon had built in Mt. Carmel. This began a decades-long interest for Zornes in the investigation of new colors, forms and light.

Maynard Dixon's Cabin. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

During the thirty years that he lived in Mt. Carmel, Zornes painted around the Zion area in every season and from every vantage point.  On 1 April - 31 July 2011, the Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts and Bingham Gallery are bringing Zorne’s work home to the Maynard Dixon property that he loved so much with a retrospective of some of his finest work; some of it painted from his own back door.

Image courtesy of Bill Anderson Art Gallery

Dixon's Front Gate by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

Caves of Kanab Canyon by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

Barn in Glendale by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery