Badlands ($2900)

Painted in Arizona, this painting depicts the artist’s interpretation of wasteland landscapes, areas that reject human imposed agriculture, development, beautification or management. These areas, which are seen from the province of Alberta all the way into southeastern Utah and throughout Arizona, have ecologies that, by default of their inhospitality, govern themselves independently. They inspire in the artist that which Edward Abbey wrote about in the 20th century; they are overwhelming and daunting to the visitor, but in this exposure we are stripped to the core, to our instincts, to our fortitude to survive under the harshest of conditions. In these landscapes we experience snap shots into our primitive memory, and in that simplicity of life versus death we experience the feeling of overwhelming beauty in an environment that is hostile, barren and ugly.