Cloud

Maynard Dixon was an American artist whose body of work focused on the American West. He loved it so much that even claimed that "The spirit of the West sings in every soul." From his first visit to Arizona and New Mexico in 1900 to his last summer in Utah in 1944, Dixon, who over the course of his career embarked on 22 working trips from Montana to Mexico, determinedly recorded the sere landscape and its ancient communities as he saw them. The artist devoted himself to reexamining the sky, land, and people of the Southwest with a remarkably fresh vision. He became a master of portraying the archaic but at the same time, Dixon fought against stereotypes. Indeed, the cloud we present today looks just like a regular part of a beautiful sky.

What is also interesting, Dixon is rarely credited for what may have been his most visible contribution: the rust-red color of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge as an antidote to San Francisco's gray weather. Not only did the artist lobby for the project with drawings published in the San Francisco Chronicle, in 1935 he wrote bridge designer Irving Morrow, whom he had recommended for the job, urging, “if our bridges – particularly the Golden Gate Bridge – are to appear the wonders of the world they are supposed to be, they should most certainly be painted an eye-filling color.” He was right!

P.S. Admire the divine beauty of West American landscapes, including California on canvas!

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