A Sense of Place

Human beings often have emotional connections to a physical place; be it a country, a landscape, a childhood home, a cultural identity, or other less defined spaces. This exhibit explores those connections that provide a sense of roots, comfort, or grounding. Artists were asked to delve into the places that make them who they are, that give them A Sense of Place, and how that sense informs their work.

This show features work by 22 artists around the Rocky Mountain region. Applications were received from Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Nearly 100 works were submitted, and the jury selected 44 for inclusion in the show. A blind jury selected a piece for the Best in Show award to be announced during the opening reception, and there will be a People’s Choice ballot throughout the exhibit that will be announced during the final week of the show.

Please vote for People's Choice by clicking here

Lucinda Abbe
watercolor on handmade paper
12x12 in
$375.00

I feel at home with clouds; they decorate the ceiling of my world. Am I watching cloud angels at work? I make clouds on paper. I want to be like an angel, sculpting with almost imperceptible particles. Jackson Hole is full of peaks, everywhere you look. The wind composes a relationship between sky, peak and clouds. I concentrate on the line of beauty. The wind dances; I love to dance. I am listing the connections I feel with nature. There are more: Dawn! mist! trees! especially trees. (Especially everything.) This tree is on a rolling hill in Petaluma, surrounded by peace at dawn. What I want to convey is that painting in nature is a two-way conversation, guaranteed to uplift the spirits.

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Lucinda Abbe
watercolor and graphite on handmade paper
12x12 in
$375.00

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Lucinda Abbe
watercolor, acrylic and oil pastel on handmade paper
12x12 in
$375.00

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Pamela R Baker
oil on canvas
17x17 in
$650.00

I moved to Jackson 2016. I intend to live here the rest of my life. Jackson has become my home and my sense of place. I was fortunate to rent my studio as soon as I moved here. I was in the right place at the right time. I’ve had many studios but this one is my favorite. It has become my sense of place where I feel free and I just paint. As soon as the paint hits the canvas, I think about nothing except what I am painting. I live 1.2 miles away from my studio. An easy bike ride awayTo the north of my home are the Tetons, to the east is Crystal Butte and to the south is Snow King Mountain.Snow King is less than a mile from my home. I hike and ski it every season. I know every trail. I now call Snow King Mountain ""My Mountain"". It has become my sense of space and I have painted it many times. When I finished this most recent painting, “Snow King at Dusk”, I thought “I have created light! I must be God.”It pays homage to my mountain. From the back, outside my studio door to the east is the old town jail of Jackson. I have also painted it many times. It is such a special building. John is our handyman and the Jail is John’s office. He fixes everything broken. He took great care to repair the roof before my artwork was damaged. My last painting of the old Jail has John leaving his ""office"". It pays homage to John. ""Looking West"" is what I see when I leave my studio by the front door onto South Cache. It’s the sky and clouds above the parking lot between the Center of the Arts and the Antler Inn. Clouds and sky are my sense of place. My process: Because I like to “escape and hide” I paint in my studio. I use photos and drawings as reference. I do not like or depend on any systems of procedure. I avoid them at all cost. Each painting is a fresh start and I am clueless about how to proceed. I like it that way. When I have decided a painting is done I am always in awe that I created something from nothing."

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Pamela R Baker
oil on canvas
12x16 in
$475.00

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Pamela R Baker
oil on canvas
16x20 in
$750.00

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Rivkah Bar-or
glazed stoneware
5x7x7 in
$1,000.00

This collection represents a lived experience and what evolves from it. It calls on a space in my mind, more than a physical location. As a child, I would hang my feet off the dock and watch the fish weave around me.These pieces play on the fantastical childhood experience of catching sight of the glittering scales swim past and imagining an entirely new world beneath the sea. This is a place of comfort, control, and exploration.

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Rivkah Bar-or
glazed stoneware
9x7x7 in
$1,000.00



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Rivkah Bar-or
glazed stoneware
9x7x7 in
$1,000.00

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Carol Bocker
watercolor on paper
36x22 in
$2,500.00

I live in the most beautiful place in the world. The Teton mountains and all its animal inhabitants are my place to go. On the day I received the news that I had cancer I went to the elk refuge in Jackson and took a photo of a of beautiful pair of Sheep that lived in the refuge at different times of the year .Since that day I have been painting many animals to my joy! My cancer is still with me but so are my paintings and I now find new life in representing them in my watercolors.

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Edyta DeBoer
watercolor on paper
14x10 in
$450.00

Four seasons. There is nothing more fulfilling than dramatic changes in light, color, smell, sound, warmth and cold. As a little child, I was mesmerized by the constant changes of the landscapes of the Baltic Sea where I grew up. All through my years, I was drawn to the beauty of seasons, but never knew how to express this euphoric feeling of nature's dynamics until I moved to Wyoming. Suddenly everything made sense again, suddenly I felt alive again, suddenly an overwhelming happiness of being able to see and feel all the changes, made me pick up a brush and paint my first watercolor painting. The constant unexpected dance of water and pigment reflects the never-ending dynamics of nature. As an unexperienced artist, I am looking forward to a variety of paintings that will give others and myself a feeling of comfort and peace.

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Edyta DeBoer
watercolor on paper
10x14 in
$450.00

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Barbara Falvey
watercolor on paper
10x14 in
$800.00

In the late 1990’s, my husband found an old ranch property for sale near Freedom, Wyoming while browsing the internet. We met and fell in love in the area years before, so we always dreamt of owning a home there. Through good timing and a bit of luck, we were able to buy it. As the years passed, we enjoyed summer vacations with our sons and, in later years, with their growing families. Sadly, my husband passed away unexpectedly in 2022. After his death, I jumped into watercolor painting to help fill the void. It’s been a gift that teaches me to relinquish control and accept outcomes. I have also learned to enjoy the solitude at “Mustache Ranch” — named in honor of my husband who sported a mustache for most of his adult life! I continue to visit in the summer and enjoy painting the expansive views as well as my animal neighbors, who are always wonderfully focused on the present moment. For me, that’s really what painting is about — staying in the moment while remembering and acknowledging the road that lead me here.

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Barbara Falvey
watercolor on paper
11x14 in
sold

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Eliot Goss
watercolor on paper
10x10 in
$650.00

Watercolor technique was part of my architectural education and practice from 1955 onward. Today I continue painting and drawing in all mediums. I painted my first watercolor here in Wilson at Trail Creek Ranch in May 1961.

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Michèle Jenkinson
oil on linen
5x7 in
$225.00

The title of this show - A Sense of Place - completely resonates with what I try to capture with each of my paintings. My need to paint is based on my desire to make a connection with nature. Each of my paintings has a subject matter that is nature focused--whether it is a sunset, a mountain view, wildlife, or something similar. When I am painting en plein air, I often select my subject based on the spot where I want to be situated; I’ll paint by a stream so I can hear the water gurgle, but rarely paint the water. And as I paint, I strive to replicate the emotional response triggered by the scene I am painting. I try to recreate that experience for myself, but also hope a viewer of my work can enter my world and feel the "sense of place" I have tried to capture.

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Michèle Jenkinson
oil on linen
5x7 in
$225.00

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Christine Liske
watercolor on paper
16x20 in
$450.00

I believe a sense of place is where one feels a very strong connection and peace. After my husband and I retired in 2019, we traveled around the country in our Airstream Trailer for a year. Our “special place” was wherever we were at the present time. We enjoyed meeting new people, local cuisine, painting and photography. We were searching for a new place to call home. After awhile, I realized that the places where I felt the strongest connection and sense of place was in the mountains. Whether it was Rockies, Sierra Nevada or the Red Rock mountains of Sedona, in the mountains is where I felt most at peace, safe and connected. My watercolor painting is titled The Mountain Listens. This is Wilson Mountain and it is a short hike from my home in Sedona, Arizona. This mountain (and a special rock I sit on) is the place I go to meditate, talk to the mountain and I know it listens. I listen too. Perhaps it is the ancient wisdom the mountains must hold that captivates me. This mountain gives me that sense of place in this world.My hope is that everyone can find their own sense of place and connection in this world - whether it is in the arms of a loved one, a place they can visit in their mind or a special place to hike to.

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Tracy Logan
acrylic on canvas
36x36 in
$2,500.00

It is a pleasure to be able to call Wyoming home, having being born and raised in this state it has allowed me to experience this wonderful landscape. Being submersed in the natural world has given me an appreciation for all it has to offer, embracing what I define as indeed “a sense of place”.

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Susan Marsh
watercolor on paper
19x15 in
$300.00

Among the many beautiful mountains where I live, a favorite lies in the central part of the Salt River Range. Rock Lake Peak is not easy to reach, and at my age I don't expect to visit its slopes again. But I can continue to love it through views from a distance, photographs, memories, and the paintings I made earlier in 2024 during a stormy winter week, using summer photos I took some years ago.

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Susan Marsh
watercolor on paper
19x15 in
$300.00

Among the many beautiful mountains where I live, a favorite lies in the central part of the Salt River Range. Rock Lake Peak is not easy to reach, and at my age I don't expect to visit its slopes again. But I can continue to love it through views from a distance, photographs, memories, and the paintings I made earlier in 2024 during a stormy winter week, using summer photos I took some years ago.

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Michelle McCarron
photography
13x19 in
$700.00
Awarded Best in Show

The photographs included for exhibition are from a personal project I began in the winter of 23-24 in Jackson Hole called Cognitive Dissonance. After escaping a relationship which had been psychologically and emotionally abusive, I was left feeling that I didn't really know who I was anymore. To overcome the loss of a sense of self and a reality where I questioned everything, both symptoms of trauma, I started to turn the camera on myself and immerse myself back into the reason I had come to Jackson in the first place. The landscape and its wildness had drawn me in, and now I needed to draw the landscape into me again, to reconnect with my greatest inspiration. The process of self portraiture allowed mental and visual self exploration and the in camera multiple exposure allowed a montage with the land both physically, psychologically and metaphorically speaking, while allowing the overall process to heal me. The project's impetus was the overwhelming need to create from pain, to release it, to start anew, to re-emerge with a clear vision of who I was, to find peace and a sense of place once again in this familiar landscape.

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Michelle McCarron
photography
13x19 in
$700.00

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Bobbi Miller
oil on canvas
10x8 in
$410.00

"Having lived in beautiful Buffalo Valley, Moran, Wyoming for over twenty years, I find the experience similar to being immersed in a postcard with the main, distant attraction of Mount Moran.Named for Thomas Moran, the famous frontier landscape artist, Mount Moran, a citadel of the northern range of the Teton mountains, is the first thing I view in the mornings, when opening the blinds of my bedroom. She is a queenly sight, guarding the Moran community and announcing coming changes in the weather. I love finding her various poses throughout our valley by sketching from home or on site and returning to my cabin studio to finalize oil paintings. (See entry:""Good Morning from the Bedroom Window"")Other iconic vistas in Buffalo Valley are offered by the National and Scenic Buffalo Fork River, a tributary of the Snake River. Its undulations are peacefully mesmerizing. These, too, I try to capture in my sketchbooks and on canvas. (See entry:""The Flow of Life: Relished Solitude"")Wintering in Florida the past several years has enhanced a love of the abstract as I experiment with a new color harmony. (See entry: ""The Flow of Life: Rejuvenation"")""Embracing Place"" underscores my art-making and is, in fact, the anchoring statement to my website. Observation of place and landscape is paramount to my art inspiration. With sketchbook in hand, i hope to continue my meditative practice while offering paintings to the interested viewer"

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Bobbi Miller
oil on canvas
8x10 in
$410.00

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Madisen Mitchell
mixed media
16x14x4 in
$450.00

The outdoors has been a huge part of my existence and the main inspiration for my art. I take found objects, like animal bones, and breathe new life into them with sculptural taxidermy arrangements that speak of the landscape in which they were found. Staying true to my roots, these pieces all share a certain Western flair while blending the folklore of Wyoming with that of my ancestral Norwegian and Celtic heritages. In ""Home"", I bring elements found in my Pinedale 'backyard' as an homage to Wyoming and the animals that live there. As for the ""In Situ"" pieces, I recreated the way in which the bones were found in both pieces by how they came together in each arrangement.

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Madisen Mitchell
mixed media
28x17x2 in
$250.00

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