Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☀️ 10 – 35° in Logan ☀️ 27 – 46° in Salt Lake City ☀️ 36 – 57° in St. George Several years ago, I was driving along Highway 89 in southern Utah on my way to a work function in Kanab. On the side of the road, I saw a beautiful log-cabin-style home with a sign out front that said, “MAYNARD DIXON, HOME AND STUDIO, FINE ARTS GALLERY.” I came across Maynard Dixon’s paintings in middle school while working on a report about another artist. His paintings of the American Southwest are almost abstract in the sense that the natural forms of the red rock, mountains and big fluffy clouds each stand out on their own. But all together, they tell a complete story of a moment in time before the West was heavily settled and developed. Although it has a uniquely Western flavor, Dixon’s work also hearkens back to the Romanticism of the Hudson River School with images of sweeping American landscapes containing images of cowboys, farmers and Native Americans shrinking into the grandeur of their surroundings. As soon as I saw this sign on the side of the highway, I swerved my rental car into the parking lot. I had places to be, but I was not going to miss the opportunity to see the place Dixon lived and worked. Today, the property is owned by Paul and Susan Bingham. Driven by a desire to preserve Dixon’s legacy, they established the Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts in 1999. The location now serves as a gallery for artists cut from the same cloth as Dixon as well as a museum and artist retreat. In 2003, Susan Bingham told the Deseret News, "(Dixon) found serenity and inspiration here. And artists still come to be inspired by the same things he was.” Arts and culture articles you may have missed: 🤖 Art or artifice: Is AI taking the human out of humanities? (Deseret Magazine) 🤠 Home range: Ivan McClellan’s intimate portraits of the Black cowboys of the West (Deseret Magazine) 🎞️ Are the Oscars and other awards shows increasingly just for the elites? (Deseret News) 🎟️ What big shows are coming up in Utah? (Deseret News) Also on our minds: The vanishing American man, whether you should co-sleep with your baby, Utah State falls in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and what early Latter-day Saint church leaders said about the Great Salt Lake. | .png?width=1200&upscale=true&name=Utah%20Today%20Banner%20(v2).png)
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