Landscapes
Dai has spent thousands of nights sleeping under the stars on the land. As a wilderness guide, Dai has had the opportunity to sit around camp fires in blizzards, search for water in desert canyons, and track cougars across mountains. Dai's relationship with the land is one of reverence and deep loving connection. Through their artwork, Dai brings the viewer into this familial relationship with place.
Lucy Halls
Echo Basin, La Platas
Anyone who lives where aspens grow knows the way they glow golden when autumn comes. As days shorten, their shimmering leaves brighten the world. They seem to laugh as they sway and bring lightness to our hearts.
This painting was created for 98 year old veteran and lifelong resident of Cortez, Colorado. Now the beauty of this land he loves gets to be with him every day.
Summer Harvest
Emerald Lake, Weminuche Wilderness
This painting was inspired and created for the Everybody Eats harvest event at the Cortez Cultural Center 2024.
In late August, the mountains in Southwest Colorado are filled with many forms of abundance. In spending time with this painting, you are invited to a feast for the eyes and to be a part of honoring the wild lands that feed us all.
Storm King
Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado
2024
Trinities
Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado
2024
Continental Divide
Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado
2024
Tirthan Valley
Kullu, Northern India
2024
The Mountains Who Hold Us
La Platas, Mancos, CO
This painting is of the La Platas in Southwest Colorado. These are the mountains that feed the valley I live in. They hold snow for much of the year, raging creeks in the spring, and mushrooms and berries in the summer and fall. My hope in this painting is to honor these mountains that I love and that hold me and so many others so lovingly.
The Stewards of The Rio Grande
The Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande, Texas/Mexico Border
This painting is of an audad looking out over the Rio Grande, east of Big Bend National Park. Audads are sheep originally native to Africa who have been living in the US since the 1940s. For me, this painting is an honoring of the land as well as an invitation into curiosity of what it means as a non-native to cultivate relationship with land.
I was lucky enough to spend two weeks boating this stretch of the RIo Grande in 2022. It is wild beautiful country out there, and it was such a gift to get to share that land with the turtles and swallows, audads and raccoons, and so many other beings that call that land home.
East Verde Elders
Confluence of the Verde and East Verde River, Cottonwood, AZ
This painting is of the place where I first truly fell in love with the desert southwest. In 2015, a co-guide (who later became my spouse) took me to this land where he had had the privilege of guiding in 2011. I had never met a saguaro before that moment. Since then, I have spent hundreds of days exploring this land and hundreds of nights falling in love with the wild mystery that the Sonoran desert holds. I am so grateful for this land that has held me in so many ways.
Moon Lake
Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado
2024
Rock Lake
Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado