Our Better Angels by Lyn Boyer
30 x 40 in.
Oil on linen on panel
Grand Canyon Association is pleased to announce the 11th Annual Grand Canyon Celebration of Art at Grand Canyon National Park.
In honor of the 100 year anniversary of Grand Canyon National Park, this year’s Celebration of Art will recognize the achievements of contemporary artists who successfully interpret the canyon, both in plein air and studio work.
Since its inception in 2009, Celebration of Art has invited participating artists to paint “en plein air” for a week at Grand Canyon. The works produced during this time are shown alongside studio-produced pieces at the historic Kolb Studio in an exhibition and sale that extends for four months.
Celebration of Art is a wonderful tradition at Grand Canyon National Park, providing a vibrant experience for visitors, a venue for artists inspired by the canyon, and a successful fundraiser to benefit arts programming and a dedicated art venue at the South Rim. Art plays a critical role in the appreciation of our national parks, and this event helps to keep the artistic tradition part of the Grand Canyon experience.
Following in the footsteps of the many artists that have painted the Grand Canyon over the past 160 years, this year’s CoA artists will face the challenges that capturing the canyon presents. Its vastness, ever shifting light and shadows, unpredictable weather, and unique perspective has frustrated many an artist.
Colorado artist Lyn Boyer, one of this year’s participating artists, has met and overcome these challenges. In her first year (2017) she won the Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine’s Collectors’ Choice Award and in 2018 was awarded the Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine’s Best of Show—Studio Painting. Of her studio painting for this year’s event featured here, Our Better Angels, Boyer reflects:
“For me the Grand Canyon brings peace because it also offers perspective. It beckons us to step back and see the whole. It reminds us that things are ever changing. That light fades – but in the cycle of all things it returns. Down through time the sky and the Canyon have conversed, sometimes in whispers, at times as a symphony and other times fearfully as Indra hurls bolts of fire from the sky. But for now, for our moment in time, we can watch the day washed in light give way to a last glow, which gives way to stars, to rest and then dawn again. It calls to our better angels.”
During the week of September 7-14, 2019, visitors will have the opportunity to watch the 23 painters, including Boyer, create artwork along the South Rim as they interpret the amazing land forms and vibrant colors of this vast landscape. In addition, there will be free artist demonstrations scheduled at various locations at the South Rim throughout out the week.
On Saturday September 14 from 8 to 10 am the artists will be participating in a Quick Draw along the South Rim from Verkamp’s to Kolb Studio, with an auction of their work at 11:00 a.m. at Bright Angel Trailhead.
The Celebration of Art exhibit and sale opens at 11:00 a.m. on September 15, 2019, and will be open daily through January 20, 2020, at the historic Kolb Studio at the South Rim of Grand Canyon. Admission is free and open to the public.
Please visit grandcanyon.org or contact Kathy Duley at [email protected]
or 480-277-0458 for more information.
