St. George, Utah

This was the last day of the art exhibit celebrating Zion National Park's 100th anniversary. We went down to St. George to see it. It had two parts. On the ground floor was a juried exhibition of new works created by contemporary artists specifically for the centennial celebration. Valerie had submitted works to the jury and had not been selected. So, we were wondering what kind of pictures got in. In addition to the usual stuff from painters whose work I don't tend to like—for example, Bonnie Posselli and Jim Jones—there were a handful of very strong paintings from some unfamiliar artists. My favorite was probably Salt Lake painter Anne Penrod's vivid abstraction entitled The Road Less Travelled. It was like she had done Maynard Dixon one better with her strong blue shadows and bright blocks of color.

Speaking of Maynard Dixon, the second floor was taken up with an historic exhibit of works from a variety of artists starting in 1870. Aside from a very nice little painting by Franz Bischoff (and a watercolor from Wallace Lee), I thought the historic part of the show served only to highlight the remarkable skill of Dixon and his reported friend LeConte Stewart. Dixon and Stewart stood out as two of the best painters in the building and it would have been fun to sit with them, circa 1935, to see them strut their stuff.

http://annepenrod.com/welcome.html