Indigenous Inspiration: Landscape and Artists of Sedona Arizona

Our exploration of the Sedona area continued a bit farther out to view and learn more about the culture and desert landscape.  We set out for Montezuma Castle and Well, both with ancient cliff dwellings. We’d never seen the Castle, but we’d stopped at the well on our way to San Diego forty years and forty pounds ago! It’s a marvel. The well is a natural limestone sinkhole which is fed by underground springs. It’s a sacred place to the Yavapai people.  We didn’t approach these places as places for painting, but places for understanding—places to appreciate the landscape, to see and feel that would inform our later paintings.

Cliff Dwelling -Montezuma Castle

Montezuma Well

The next day, on our quest to understand the history of the area we set out also for the old copper mining town of Jerome, which has now become an artists’ colony, an opportunity for some present day human inspiration.  Most of the artwork is full of hot color and gaiety.  We got pelted briefly with bits of hail in April skipping up the steep streets.  The desert— a varied experience!

It’s time to get back to painting the landscape, so on the way back to Sedona, we stopped at Red Rock State Park and followed the Kisva Trail.  Kisva is Hopi for “Shady Water”.  Here I found many secluded spots that appealed to my desire to paint intimate spaces.

Red Rock Beauty Available at Figments Gallery

Kisva Trail Sycamores-Watercolor Field Sketch

While in Sedona, we visited many private galleries and the Sedona Arts Center.  I became aware of these established fine artists: Bill Cramer, Keith Lindberg, Gretchen Lopez, and Lynn Heil.

April in the desert—yellow greens to olive and sap greens, wheat colored grass, lemon yellow buds, violets and eggplant purple shadows, nearly lapis blue sky, cool blue grays and pink gray underbrush, light terracotta to oranges to burnt sienna to brown orange and blazing red rocks, ravens, white sycamore trunks piercing through the evergreens, dry creek beds, water trickling over rocky streams, sudden hail, and roadside wildflowers.

Inspiration!

If you’re local to the Cary area, please join us for Final Friday Art Loop which happens—guess when?—the last Friday of each month!  Galleries open in the evening and provide refreshments and new exhibits.

In Cary, my paintings are available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am - 5:30 pm.

On the coast, my works are available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center, Wilmington, NC 28405 910-509-4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com