Grand Canyon News

One of my favorite painters ever to wield a brush is Maxfield Parrish.  You may say you don’t know who he is, but I’ll bet you do: his various renderings of lithe young ladies bathed in opalescent auras, usually wearing nothing but loosely draped togas have sold hundreds of thousands of greeting cards around the world.  Indeed, it was a greeting card with ”Daybreak“ on the cover that first introduced me to his work and I’ve been fascinated ever since.  Maxfield Parrish’s heyday was the 1920’s.  The ”art deco” architectural vibe is definitely there, like in “Egypt.” In other paintings, the ladies have that distinct “flapper” hairdo.  He not only did fine art pieces, but did many magazine covers and advertisements.   His technique had a luminous quality to it that to this day, I don’t think has been replicated.  So finely tuned was his own sense of color, a shade of blue was actually named after him back in the day.  In all fairness, he did paint men, children, animals, women over 30 (ha ha ha), etc., but his favorite subject through it all was young women (although…sometimes it was hard to tell) loosely dressed in quasi-Grecian fashion.. if they were dressed at all.  Mid-career, Parrish made a stylistic shift.  In the early ’30’s, he declared himself “done with girls on rocks,” and decided to concentrate on landscapes, and it was actually this part of his work that I came to appreciate most.  One look at ”Winter Nights 2″ and you’ll feel snow crunching beneath your feet. Parrish painted a variety of locations, like the midwest, the Northeast, etc.  The beauty of the Southwest was not lost on him, either.  Did he actually spend time here?  Hang out in the Phoenix area or maybe hike the Grand Canyon?  I don’t know, but judging by the light and color of works like “Arizona” and “Canyon,” you’d have to believe that he did bear witness to an Arizona sunrise, just like the one I saw yesterday morning as a line of thunderstorms had moved across the state during the night, through Flagstaff, the Navajo reservation and on into the Four Corners area.  By 5:00 AM, most of the system had pushed through, but this one small cell had straggled behind.  I remember thinking, this little cloud ain’t going down quietly!  It rained and thundered and lightning shot out of it every which way.  But all around this little cloud was clear sky.  Coming up over the hill just before you get to the Glen Canyon Dam, the view was amazing.  Makes me hope that a painter, photographer, a sculptor or some kind of artist was watching.  It would be a shame not to have a view like that captured forever.  I’m glad that at least it was in my memory.   Til next time…. Happy Travels!