As though seared into our collective consciousness, some images of the American Southwest seem to fully embody its inhospitable terrain, mercurial weather, and intense, challenging beauty. One of these would most certainly be Edward Curtis’ dramatic 1904 photograph of the sacred Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “deh-shay”) in Arizona, featuring a string of Navajo riders on horseback, silhouetted against towering rock formations behind them.
Both a record of the Indigenous inhabitants who called this land home for centuries, taken 40 years after the forced march known as the Long Walk, the photo is also a testament to a quickly evolving nation. And the drama of the region’s canyons, ridges, mountains, buttes, and mesas continue to enthrall us today. For Brett Allen Johnson, these timeless, arid landscapes inspire glowing oil paintings that draw upon the legacies of Western painters like Maynard Dixon and Georgia O’Keeffe.
A solo show of Johnson’s paintings, Two Worlds, opens next month at Maxwell Alexander Gallery. Most of the images shown here are included, like the mineralized, colorful outcrops of “Banded Cliffs, Fruita,” based on a historic location in Capitol Reef National Park. The exhibition also includes the show’s titular painting, “Two Worlds,” which shows an anonymous, completely uninhabited canyon rim from the opposite side.
Johnson’s forms are brushy and somewhat simplified, although not to the extent that they appear cartoonish. He smooths rocky ledges, gives clouds the weight of dense felt, and illuminates apertures in pueblos, mountains, and rainstorms. Through the interplay of light, shadow, and hue, he renders soaring buttes with fleshy folds and highlights unique patterns in nature.
“Technique, composition, color, and paint handling—they all say something even if we don’t intend them to,” Johnson says. “But the more I can get to the heart of it, the more I can simplify a painting into just the parts I find indispensable—the essence—those fundamentals become just tools in service of a vision.”
Two Worlds opens on September 6 in Pasadena. Explore more on Johnson’s Instagram.
