After a year of uncertainty, Colorado-based painter Jill Carver aims to keep things simple for her next exhibition. “I just wanted to do a showcase of small paintings from my travels,” she says. “Most of them tend to be intimate scenes, sourced from me wandering and hiking different [terrains].” The artist will present around 15 new works, mostly 20-by-20 and 12-by-16-inch pieces, and potentially a larger 30 by 60.
Sunset Study – Paria River, oil on panel, 12 x 16”
“I think this is the first time since [I started painting] that everything was cleared off the calendar,” Carver says of all the free time she’d been unexpectedly given due to the pandemic. “So I decided this fall to hunker down, to get back to basics.” That meant taking several camping trips, often with her dog Ellie, to some of the many spellbinding locales the Southwest has to offer—spots like Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah; Natural Bridges National Monument in Lake Powell, Utah; Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado, locations in Arizona and more. Originally from London, England, she adds, “If you ask me about my favorite memories as a child, it was camping trips in Scotland.”
Rising Clouds – Canyonlands, oil on linen panel, 8 x 10”
Ancient Landscapes: A Visual Journal, held at Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, features paintings of the scenes and moments that captivated Carver most during these camping exploits. “Waking up in the morning freezing cold, getting coffee ready, it was really magical getting back to that. Going to fairly remote places where there’s [hardly any people], there’s something to say about the solace of going to landscapes that are hundreds of millions of years old...It was magical.”
Cliff Dweller, oil on panel, 20 x 20”
Sunset Study – Paria River captures a moment of stunning light along the Paria River, a tributary of the Colorado River, as it emerges in Marble Canyon, Arizona. Within the painting, we see the kinds of colors only an Arizona sunset can produce cast upon the water. “I don’t like rendering every detail like a photograph, I like the power of suggestion,” she says. “For me I’ve always responded to things that aren’t fully explained...Isn’t it more exciting when the viewer gets more of that journey themselves, and they have to complete the thought?”
Ancient Landscapes: A Visual Journal will be on view from March 6 to 20.
Upcoming Show
Up to 15 works
March 6-20, 2021
Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery
6872 E. Sunrise Drive, Suite 130
Tucson, AZ 85750
(520) 722-7798
www.medicinemangallery.com
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