Desert Yucca
I had an epiphany while walking the trails among the sandstone giants of Arches National Park. As the wind and rain sculpted these arches, the sculpted debris lay everywhere at my feet. Millennia ago, this sand was rock perched above the desert floor. But now it’s a thick layer of orange grit littered with the desiccated grey bones of cypress trunks — yet teeming with life.
The still life of this yucca and cypress trunks caught my eye, the yucca thriving in a sea of not-lifeless sand.
For this piece, I laid a foundation of L’Ecu soft pastels onto canvas. I applied fixative, then detailed the spikes of the yucca with oil pastels — to bring the yucca definitively into the foreground.
Inspiration: somewhere on the trail between Navajo & Partition arches, Arches National Park, Utah
