“The tension in the American landscape is not always represented in landscape paintings. Instead, often we see a pastoral or romantic respite from the urban, industrial realities of
our contemporary lives. In these three large landscape paintings and six small studies of land art, petroglyphs and more recent performance art, I consider how certain art and artists make visible the outsized public impact of culture on land in the American west. These artists challenge us to see beyond the romantic and embrace the everyday presence of the art in our midst. Their work inspires us by drawing attention to both the cultural complexity and sublime threat of human presence in the western landscapes of our time.”