This image shows a painting which is framed in a pigmented pastel pinkish brown panel that includes fragments of earth and rocks from the sites where the paintings were made. The composition basically becomes an abstraction of a section of a boulder with the sides of the rock flush with the picture frame. The slight curvature of form at the bottom right corner of the painting creates the notion of a rock-face or boulder-like form along with the inclusion of a patch of dirt and some wheat colored grasses. The surface of the boulder is painted in short energetic, curved, squiggly and linear brushstrokes of browns, reds, pinks, yellows, blues, grays, white, creams and purples to accentuate the curvature or angularity of the rock itself with its holes and mottled textures. In the center-right of the composition the surface of the rock is split in two directions - where a section is cleaved in the shape of a horizontal rectangle. Without the curvature of the rock in the lower right-hand corner, the painting would resemble a view looking down at a section of a river flow.

Boulder

ArtistJosephine Halvorson
Year2020
Dimensions32 x 32 inches (81.3 x 81.3 cm)
MediumGouache and site material on panels
CreditCourtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

I spotted this boulder along a dirt road leading to the monastery of Christ in the Desert, near the Chama River. It stood alone, dark and solitary against the red earth, and initially appeared to be a carved epitaph. Looking closer, I saw its cracks were geological. Its natural crevices presented themselves like a roadmap of the terrain—a connection to a much deeper past.

―Josephine Halvorson, August 2021

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Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Rock with White Background, 1963-1971. Oil on canvas, 20 3/16 x 16 1/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on Collections Online.