Dusk Kane Gulch

I am Shelley Hull, a contemporary painter of western landscape, living in Denver, Colorado. 

I discovered my love of the southwest almost 45 years ago after spending most of my life east of the 100th Meridian. I came to New Mexico in the 70s to visit family. We came every year and I would sketch, bedazzled by New Mexico, Colorado and Indian Country. I found myself drawn to the skies, colors, scale, sounds and sculptural elements of the southwest. 

I am drawn to them, delighted by them, and inspired to an extent I cannot fully explain. The landscape moves me and speaks to me in a deeply personal way. Coming to the southwest was like ‘coming home’. I then moved to Denver in 1997 and I could indulge my love of this western landscape more regularly. My paintings for the last 25 years reflect the terroir, the sound, light, and energy that is uniquely southwestern. 

The painting Dusk Kane Gulch is part of a series of paintings done after serving as Artist-in-Residence for Canyon Country Utah, a program administered by the BLM. Like most of my paintings it was done in-studio relying on onsite sketches, photos I took, and memory.

I had explored parts of Eastern Utah - Moab, Canyonlands, Indian Creek, Natural Bridges, Hovenweep in different trips throughout the years - nibbling at the edges of Bears Ears National Monument for a few days here and there. I always hoped to explore Bears Ears more thoroughly.

As Artist-in-Residence I spent two weeks in late September and early October of 2023 in Bears Ears National Monument. Having the time to spend immersed in the park, isolated from much of the outside world, exploring, sketching, painting and photographing, was phenomenal and inspiring. The Monument is remote. I was housed in a tiny home behind the Kane Gulch Ranger station. At the tiny home there was no cell or radio station service and extremely limited WiFi. With few distractions I spent days exploring and gathering visual inspiration; painting and sketching. I did smaller plein air watercolors and acrylic paintings on panels. At night I would review photos and sketches I had made that day, editing the photos and making small paintings from the photos and drawings I had done earlier in the day. Sometimes in reviewing the day’s images I would make note of a location I would like to return to at a specific time of day.

After my return to Denver I spent the months from October 2023 through the summer of 2024 making paintings from my time in the Utah landscape. The time at Cedar Mesa was intense and fed my painting for many months. One of the wonderful things about the residency was  wandering around in the early morning and early evening and experiencing the change of light as the sun rose or set in the quiet after hours in the remote park.

Dusk Kane Gulch was actually one of the last paintings I did after returning from my Utah residency. I loved capturing the wall of vegetation, the blooming rabbitbrush and the early evening light at the gulch. It seemed to come out of my accumulated knowledge of the place and was built upon lessons learned from other, earlier paintings of the series.