Nevada Falls, has just been received into the collection of the University of California at Santa Barbara Art Museum. In 1990-92, I went back to Yosemite and Big Sur to paint plein air. I camped and painted. I was teaching again at UCSB and was looking for a wilder landscape to paint.
It turned out to be a wonderful adventure and I started to make larger paintings back in Brooklyn. Tony Shafrazi heard about them and asked me to be the first show reopening his new gallery on Wooster St.
The Ro Snell Gallery, meanwhile also liked the idea and offered me a show of a group of the paintings. This was before the Shafrazi Show.
Paintings of landscape are perceived differently in different places. There is a problem with landscapes being seen as amateur or tourist oriented in beautiful places where they are plenty.
It seemed in NY they might just be seen as pure painting again. I had always a strong sense of the political in relation to environmentalism and I was also interested in the American story of myth and adventure. I thought painting itself suited these themes and could bring them together.
This painting, pictured above, Nevada Falls, has just been received into the collection of the University of California at Santa Barbara Art Museum.
