On Saturday, May 16, the Bighorn Gallery at Dead Horse Point State Park is hosting an opening reception for its current exhibit “Three Artists, Three Media, One Landscape.”
The show, which is now on display through June 30, is composed of original paintings done in three different media – in oil by Carolyn Dailey, in pastels by Sonya Johnson and in watercolors by Barbara Klema.
All three artists are members of the Plein Air Painters of the 4 Corners (PAP4C).
The opening reception on May 16 will be held from 3 to 5 p.m in the Bighorn Gallery, with refreshments served and guitar music played by Thomas Klema. Larry Edwards will give a brief poetry reading of some of his desert poems.
Carolyn Dailey has lived in Moab since 2010 and has been a plein air painter for more than 25 years. Her primary training in the plein air tradition was in the early 1990s by workshop study at the Fechin Institute of Taos, New Mexico, with Mark Daily, Michael Lynch and Ned Jacobs. Over her career, she has participated in numerous one-woman and group shows in the U.S. and Guatemala, where she lived for 15 years. She has also won top awards in recent plein air juried shows and festivals in the southwest. Her paintings at the Bighorn Gallery are plein air oils capturing the area surrounding Moab.
Sonya Johnson is a landscape painter living in Durango, Colorado. She grew up in Arizona, where she took art classes in college, but she considers herself primarily self-taught. She did scientific illustration in San Francisco while attending podiatry school. Her primary medium is soft pastel done on black paper with her style falling between representational and impressionistic. Since 2011, Johnson has participated in numerous juried shows and won top awards including Best of Show at the 2013 PAP4C Juried Show in Durango. Her paintings at the Bighorn Gallery are a mix of studio and plein air work and feature landscapes of the Colorado Plateau chosen to reflect the diversity of the landscape.
Barbara Klema is a watercolor artist living in Durango who has worked as a professional artist for 30 years. Barbara has taught watercolor, drawing and design as an adjunct at Fort Lewis College. She is the former owner of two art galleries, as well as a botanical illustrator. Her watercolors, painted both in plein air and the studio, have a wide range of subjects from landscapes to musicians. Klema’s paintings have been shown at the Rocky Mountain National Watercolor Society Exhibit and the Colorado Open. She has won numerous awards in watercolor and plein air shows. The current exhibit at Dead Horse Point reflects her appreciation of the canyons of southwest Utah. Klema has original watercolors as well as cards of her work available for sale at the Bighorn Gallery.
Dead Horse Point State Park is located nine miles north of Moab on U.S. Highway 191, and 23 miles south on state Route 313. The Bighorn Gallery is inside the park’s visitor center, which is open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Park admission is $10. For more information, contact the park at 435-259-2614.
