Painters and photographers have long been drawn to Death Valley’s rapid changes in light, its vast and stark landscapes, and vibrant, yet nuanced colors. The intensity of the desert environment plays tricks with the soul of the artist - it’s rough, it’s abstract. The lines are remarkably precise before they blur with time. Each of these paintings reflect the humility of the artist in Death Valley’s overwhelming setting.
"Sand Spectres" by Fernand Lungren - 1910
Fernand Lungren (1859 – 1932) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and then at the Académie Julian in Paris. He became a magazine illustrator in New York City specializing in street and night scenes, publishing in Harper’s Scribner’s Monthly, and Century Magazines. He moved to London in 1899 and worked as a professional painter. Lungren's circle of artists included James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
After he returned to the United States, Lungren was sponsored by the Santa Fe Railroad to travel to the American Southwest in 1892, where his illustrations were published in the railroad’s 1893 guidebook to the Grand Canyon. After several more trips to the Southwest, he helped found the Santa Barbara School of the Arts and the California deserts became a main theme in his art. He took many long trips to the Mojave Desert and Death Valley.
Janet Morgan is a Brooklyn-based artist whose study of dance has colored all of her art, making it more visceral and filled with movement. She has completed three residencies in Death Valley where she is drawn to the vast geography, balanced by the slot canyons, rock strata, drifted sand, and changing light on stone. Morgan is exhilarated when rushing to paint before the light changes; it’s her only chance to catch clouds pushing themselves over the peaks in the early dawn light. “It’s almost insane to try to paint such a place as Death Valley, but we hope to capture some essence, some taste of the vast, constantly changing beauty.”
Left image
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone
"The Dog" by Delphine Rocher - 2019
Delphine Rocher is a French painter born in 1969 in Versailles. After studying Art and a career as a graphic designer and illustrator, she has devoted herself to oil painting for the past ten years.
On a David Hockney-inspired road trip with her family from Los Angeles to San Francisco via Death Valley and the Grand Canyon, Rocher was dazzled by the color, the light, and the infinite wild space. Her paintings depict Man as a respectful and humble part of nature, set in transparency over landscapes, each with the space to tell his or her own story.
“The dog, Death Valley”, part of Rocher’s “Le Nouveau Western” series, was created after a day spent in Death Valley during a heat wave. The three characters shimmer in the heat at Zabriskie Point. The landscape seeps into them. The dog is the witness of this moment. He looks slightly annoyed at having to wear those ridiculous yet so necessary little trainers.
“My visit to Death Valley was an emotional and physical shock. Physical because it was in the middle of summer with temperatures around 50°C (122F), which I had never experienced before. And then the discovery of thousands of colors and lights with the certainty that a whole life wouldn’t be long enough to discover all the nuances. In Death Valley I felt alive! A deep feeling of freedom, fullness, and vulnerability at the same time.”
Left image
Credit: Courtesy of the Artist
Right image
Credit: NPS/Ted Barone
"Death Valley" by Mirjam Seeger - 2020
Mirjam Seeger, a native of Basel, Switzerland, lives in Philadelphia. She worked as a glass painter and designer of architectural stained glass for Willet Stained Glass Studio in Philadelphia before opening her own studio.
“Death Valley” is acrylic and oil on canvas, captured after she stepped into the oven that is afternoon at Badwater and snapped the included photo. In a first version, an attempt to interpret the flow of water through the Badwater salt pan, this painting was colorful and bright. After it hung on her wall for a few years, she decided to add a haunting black glaze resulting in a landscape closer in tenor to her original photograph.
Left image
Credit: Courtesy of the Artist - MirjamSeeger.com
Right image
Credit: Photographer: Mirjam Seeger; Courtesy of the artist
"Death Valley Pinks" by Lisa Ballard - 2020
Lisa Ballard is a Belfast, Northern Ireland painter and Associate Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy in Northern Ireland. She has exhibited in Belfast, Dublin London, the Netherlands, and Los Angeles.
Ballard uses landscape to explore her obsession with color and light, looking beyond the landscape itself to create images that reflect the temporal and fleeting nature of her experience in that place. She blends images to create a new landscape, representing the way in which memories often become blurred in life. She incorporates washes, flat spray paint, and scratches to allow the painting to evolve.
Ballard visited Death Valley in February, 2020. Death Valley Pinks was captured at sunrise, looking west from the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes.
Left image
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Right image
Credit: Photographer: Lisa Ballard; Courtesy of the artist
