Between the saguaros with Maynard Dixon

Saguaros are fascinating plants and so are the landscapes in which these and other cacti dominate. Saguaros throw their shadows during sunrise or sunset. Seen from a different perspective, they appear dwarfed within the endless desert and towering rocks of the Southwest. Nobody has captured those impressions as colorful as the American artist Lafayette Maynard Dixon (1875-1946). Over 100 of his works are displayed in Arizona at the Tuscon Museum of Art. The exhibition with the title A Place of Refuge: Maynard Dixon's Arizona runs from Oct. 11 to Feb. 15, 2009.
Dixon's drawings and paintings document nature as well as people and their ways of live in the arid Southwest. The desert landscapes were an artistic and personal refuge for Dixon and today's visitors will feel and appreciate the landscape therapy. Dixon's art connects us with the past. Not just the recent past. The landscapes invoke the past on a geological scale. And they inspire us to enter and explore their dimensions—with or without an easel.