Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau

From the quiet beauty of South Park, to the shadowy river canyons cutting through the Front Range, to the windswept mesas of the western slope, the Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau is where I first began to seriously draw and paint. With spring, the Trail Ridge Road of the National Park opens. Summer ushers in the rolling thunderstorms on the high plains and the gradual retreat of snowfields down cascading mountain streams. Fall brings the golden riot of the changing aspen leaves and winter blankets the mountains in gleaming, pristine snow drifts. In Colorado, time is marked by the seasons which are a well-spring of artistic inspiration. 

The Colorado Plateau covers portions of 4 western states, including just less than half of Arizona. The Plateau is defined by its natural beauty, wide-open spaces, and horizontal land forms. It is the ancestral home of several native cultures and is steeped in Lore of the American West. The Plateau’s southern edge is defined by the Mogollon Rim, a dramatic 200-mile long escarpment separating the temperate highlands of northern Arizona and Four Corners region from the upper and lower Sonoran Desert. The Plateau is, ever so slowly, eroding through the eons, sending boulders the size of small houses tumbling to the desert flow below.

This body of work seeks to capture the seasons of the Colorado mountains and the dramatic and abrupt scenery of the Mogollon Rim. The Rim, in particular, is one of my favorite places to paint and is depicted in several of my paintings in this portfolio.