Tiffany Huff’s Southwestern Landscape Paintings
“Purposeful wanderings of the Chihuahuan desert with an undeniable feeling of reverence”
Inspired by the artist’s love of west Texas landscapes, these oil paintings represent the desert portion of the Lone Star State. The stars at night are indeed big and bright. The Chihuahuan desert is the largest of North America’s deserts and sadly, it is endangered due to factors like overgrazing, water depletion, urbanization, and resource extraction to name a few.
In this painting, the prickly pear cactus draws the viewer in. I love the shadow cast by the cactus. I can almost feel the sun on my back as I gaze at the mountains and buttes. Watch out for rattlesnakes!
Here we see a couple of tall Ocotillo plants with more in the distance. We can also see what looks like a barrel cactus on the ground. The Chihuahuan desert is home to more than 400 different species of cactus, but not the famous Saguaro we see on the logo of Old El Paso food products.
This is the Yucca Elata, more commonly known as the Soaptree Yucca. I saw a large one like this in Marfa, TX. During that same trip, I visited Terlingua, TX, a ghost town that was once home to a quicksilver mine in the late 1800s — early 1900s.
Terlingua made me feel like I was in a Clint Eastwood movie. Is it a coincidence that I’m listening to Ennio Morricone while I type this?
A bit about the artist
Tiffany Huff graduated from Texas State University with a BFA in Studio Art and an all-level teaching certification. Tiffany has taught at both high school and junior high art for the past 18 years while also working in her studio as a painter, printmaker, and freelance illustrator.
Inspired by southwestern landscapes and wildlife, Tiffany’s work explores expressions of flora and fauna through paintings, illustrations, and screen printed vintage clothing. Her heart connection to the land of west Texas has been her inspiration for many years, holding a deep respect for the ancient wisdom of the wild.
“My art has evolved quite a bit over the past decade. The past few years I have embarked on a series of oil paintings as a way to explore my love of west Texas landscapes and to study the perception of collected memories filtered through time and emotion. Moments that cannot be captured through a camera lens but must be distilled internally to create a more personal response.
My practice and inspiration as a landscape painter involves purposeful wanderings of the Chihuahuan desert with an undeniable feeling of reverence. Once I return to the studio, I play with complex color arrangements in varied hues and degrees of luminosity to evoke both collected memories and senses that unfold with the life of the mind. This series has been a way to form a deeper relationship with nature and passion for the arid scenery and life it holds.”
I am incredibly grateful to Tiffany for giving me permission to share her work with New 2 Art! As a fellow desert lover, these paintings really moved me. Thank you for reading.
Sources Cited
Visit the Chihuahuan Desert | The Nature Conservancy
Chihuahuan Desert Ecoregion (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
