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Allies: “They call this Owl Eyes, an amazing pair of caves in the Kaibab Limestone. Playing on the sound, figuring you can’t have too many allies in life.” -
River in the Sky: “River in the Sky is what I call the Milky Way, a fluid arc across an infinite sky.” -
Run Lava Run: “Lava Falls is powerful. Enter and hang on.” -
Touch and Go: “Storms blew over the Grand Canyon. I pray for rain to moisten the plants and ease survival. Sometimes it’s just virga and sometimes rain will hit one sie of the canyon and not another. Luck of the draw.”
Grand Canyon Calling gives readers a close look at Utah artist Serena Supplee’s work from 2006-2015. Supplee, who studied fine art at Northern Arizona University, has spent 35 years on the Colorado Plateau, recording its shadowy canyons, crashing rivers and moonlit draws. The book features over 50 oil and watercolor paintings, each accompanied by preparatory sketches and commentary by the artist.
It’s described as “an artist’s relationship with the Grand Canyon,” revealing her intimacy with the places she paints, garnered from a decade spent working as a guide on the Colorado, Green and San Juan rivers. Portraying canyon walls and sandstone, sometimes in brash violets, oranges and pinks, and elsewhere in softer earthen tones, Supplee continues to explore the Grand Canyon, a place that has “long captivated the mind and soul of many a romantic Westerner.”
Grand Canyon Calling
By Serena Supplee.
112 pages: $35.
Lily Canyon Books, 2016.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Grand Canyon Calling.
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