Spectacularly Scenic Grand Canyon, Arizona - Natural Wonder

Another place we visited on the tail end of our 2018 road trip is the Grand Canyon. Did you know that two of the twelve yearly deaths there come from falling off the rim? I recall my wife warning some young female tourists about keeping on the safe side of the wall. We stayed overnight in March and woke up to snow in the morning.






The scenic canyon is the perfect place for plein-air painting, an artist's delight for its atmospheric effects. The photographs shown here were taken by me. I will also share paintings by three of my favorite artists who painted this natural wonder.








Here's an oil painting by Thomas Moran. He emigrated from England to the eastern United States at the age of seven. Most famous for his paintings of Yellowstone (1871-2) and the Grand Canyon (1873), he was invited to participate in geological surveys, along with photographers, as a guest artist of the Santa Fe Railway.

American artist, Arthur Wesley Dow, born 20 years after Moran, also painted the canyon. He's probably most famous as an art educator, who taught Georgia O'Keefe. I love the feel of this painting and appreciate his minimal color palette of beautifully contrasting blues and oranges.

Here's a monochromatic photograph of mine that is a distant, less vivid, yet similar color scheme to Dow's painted version (above).








Oscar E. Berninghaus, born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1874, is also famous for painting southwest landscapes. You can see his brushwork on the cliffs that frame the left side of his painting.

                         I am amazed that the camera on my Samsung iPhone is able to pick up such levels of depth in this photograph. Think of the range of textures one could create in a watercolor painting of this scene.

When I taught about Dow to 3rd-graders, we did abstract landscapes using white oil-pastel-outlined areas filled in with chalk pastels. Our landscapes were inspired by Dow's landscapes and they came out with the same soft appeal as Dow's own creations.

Crater Lake, Oregon (1919), Dow

Lake Louise, Alberta Canada (1919), Dow

It amazes me how these two Dow's oil paintings look more like watercolors!

I'm dedicating this post to the Lowell Elementary School 3rd-grade teacher whom I had the distinct pleasure of working with on the above Dow art project. Geriann Holmes Marchio passed away much too soon in November of last year. Her enthusiasm for art and love for teaching and her students was inspiring! I recall how jazzed she would get when her students excitedly responded to my art lessons.