The American West

Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Zion and the Salt Lakes. Paintings made from the land they portray.

Across the American West

This series follows a path through four landscapes in the American West: Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and the salt lakes of Utah. Each painting carries materials gathered on site, ground by hand into the pigments of the work. These are landscapes that look striking at first sight and hold, just beneath that surface, a slow story of being reshaped by the earth and by a changing climate: hot springs sitting on an active supervolcano, canyons that keep moving, lakes retreating as the region's water shortage deepens.

The American West

Works in this series

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Echoes of the Canyon – MIND, Zion National Park Sold

The Abyss Pool – SOUL, Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park €2.600

The Abyss Pool – MIND, Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park €2.800

Element of Fire & Water – MIND, Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park €3.500

Fragments of Fire & Depth - Abyss Pool & Calcite Springs, Yellowstone €1.500

Saltbound Horizon – MIND, Salt Lakes, Utah €2.950

Saltbound Horizon – SOUL, Salt Lakes, Utah €2.275

Element of Fire & Water – SOUL, Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park €2.275

Whispers of Stone – SOUL, Bryce Canyon National Park Sold

Whispers of Stone – MIND, Bryce Canyon National Park Sold

The journey

Yellowstone

Bryce Canyon

Zion

Salt Lakes

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park

The geyser basins boil and steam over the cap of an active supervolcano. Tourists walk meters from ground that could shift overnight. From the Abyss Pool and the Grand Prismatic, geyserstones, minerals, and sand were gathered. These became the deep-blue and burning-orange pigments of the works in this series.

A labyrinth of rust-colored hoodoos, sculpted year after year by ice, wind, and rain. The canyon keeps moving, faster now as the freeze-thaw cycles that build the spires shift with the warming winters. The pigments here come straight from the canyon floor. The same weathered sandstone that builds the spires builds the painting.

Sandstone walls carved by water over millions of years. The canyon still moves: rockfalls, flash floods, slow erosion. Stones gathered here ground into ochre and shadow, the warm reds and deep darks of the painting surface.

Utah's salt lakes are growing. As the water retreats, more of the salt flat is exposed each year, a quiet reminder of the region's water shortage. Salt crystals from the flats are pressed directly into the work, where matte salt meets glossy resin like the line where water once stood.

From the land into the work

Each location contributes its own materials. The Abyss Pool gives geyserstones and a deep-blue ground. Bryce Canyon, the rust of weathered sandstone. Zion, ochre and shadow. The Salt Lakes, a crust of salt embedded into the surface of the work.

Every pigment comes from the location of the painting. Each work holds a physical fragment of that terrain, and a record of a moment that may look very different in the years to come.

Zion National Park, Utah

The American West paintings come from a journey across Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and the salt lakes of Utah. Every place gave its own materials. Yellowstone the geyserstones and the unstable blue of the pools. Bryce the rust of weathered hoodoos. Zion the layered ochre of the canyon walls. The Salt Lakes the salt itself. The series carries those landscapes back with it, in pigment and in fragment.

Marjolein