The Desert Will Hold You

Artist Statement

The Desert is normally depicted as harsh, aggressive, and expansive. And it is all those things – but in my experience it is also soft, welcoming, and self-contained. The Desert is as much crucible as it is cocoon: a place to be forged and a place to be held.

For the past four years, I’ve made my home in The Desert, a place I never expected to live, but that called me nonetheless. I’ve immersed myself in her contradictions: harsh yet soft, expansive yet small, still yet dynamic, barren yet fertile, washed out and yet so full of color. I’ve explored her exterior landscapes in parallel to diving into my own interior ones. My experiences scrambling on boulders and walking across her vast expanse have felt dreamlike in their quality. On many evenings I witness sunset and moonrise at the same moment, soft pink gradients melting into blue on one side and warm tans on the other.

In a world where everything moves so quickly, when endings come as rapidly as beginnings, The Desert has offered me stillness. Time slows down here and moments you want to savor seem to last a bit longer, allowing you to savor them even more slowly. There is a sensuality and richness to this place. It wraps itself around you, in a way. It holds you.

This feeling of being held by someone – or something – greater is at the core of this body of work, and one of the things that most struck me about staying at The Graham Residence. The approach to the home is a one-lane, bumpy, winding dirt road. You snake around boulders and hug their curves. As you drive, houses get more and more spaced out until they all but completely fall away. The residence itself sits tucked away with geologic forms on every side, visible from its many glass windows. It feels hermetic: like an escape, like a cocoon. The surrounding rocks and valleys become a literal barrier between you and normal life. It’s a contradictory experience of being held in one place, completely still, while still witnessing the passing of time via sun rising and setting over the mountainous horizon, the stars passing over you in the night sky.

I paint from life – my experience of it – but when I first concepted this show I had imagined a story about a lovers’ weekend at The Graham Residence. Something that never happened. Stolen time and stolen intimacy. What if you weren’t supposed to be with someone – how would you steal away and where would you go? What if you had finally found someone but knew you had to leave – where might you spend your last weekend? Where would you go when you want to savor a moment slowly, when you wanted or needed time to stop? I thought it might be a house like this.

I found myself really fascinated by the intimacy between new lovers: first smile, first kiss, first skin contact. The moment when everything is pure potential, the moment before you become able to hurt each other. It’s a beautiful moment, so fleeting and yet stretching out into forever. So real and yet not real at all; it’s a time when you are more an idea to each other than anything of substance. Dreamlike, imaginary.

Pairs of figures and anthropomorphic landscapes move in, out of and across these compositions. Hands reach for balls of light representing what we most desire, whatever that may be. Full moons and suns appear in the same image, indicating a passing of time. These figures can be read as much as lovers reaching for each other as an individual reaching for the divine – reaching, consciously or unconsciously, towards a fate she is pulled to. Space is depicted across the canvases and within their four edges; many hold interior spaces that pull the viewer in and deeper. While painting this show, I found out I’d be leaving The Desert, for school in The City. This show is my swan song, an ode of gratitude to a place that has given me so much and an invite to the viewer to consider what they might find if they come here too.