Untitled (Grand Canyon)

Grand Canyon by Edgar Alwin Payne is an oil painting, two feet wide and a foot and a half tall. For more about this painting style and the history of this painting, read the “About this Artwork” section above.

We look into the distance over the rim of the Grand Canyon. The Canyon is composed in five layers, with the rock formations closest to us painted in vibrant shades of tan and ochre, and the colors fading to muted purple-ish and blue-ish grays as we look further into the distance. This use of light and color gives the painting a sense of vastness that does justice to the enormous scale of the Grand Canyon.

In the immediate foreground, the tan and ochre rock formations separate, positioning us, the viewer, as if we are standing at the precipice of a trail that winds down into the depths below. The second canyon wall layer rises to our right and stretches the height of the canvas, its surface textured with block-like brushstrokes in a palette of reddish brown and occasional gray hues, as if cast in shadow. The third layer of the canyon wall only reaches half the height of the painting but is painted in brighter terracotta tones with pinkish-orange highlights, as if spotlit.

The fourth and fifth canyon wall layers complement and balance the composition. Imagine that the canvas is bisected on a diagonal from the upper right to lower left corners. The warm tones of the first three layers populate the bottom triangle of the canvas. The cool tones of the fourth and fifth layers dominate the upper triangle. The fourth layer is bulky, eroded triangular mountain shape with two small peaks painted in desaturated reds, browns and greys. The fifth layer appears as a thin strip of flat-topped mesa that extends almost the entire width of the canvas and is mostly grey. The artist left an inch or so of canvas at the very top of the composition for a sliver of sky adorned with wispy white clouds, offering a tranquil contrast to the rugged terrain below and capturing the majestic and serene essence of the Grand Canyon.