Landscape VII (28x20")

Ink on ivory cotton paper.

Signed and dated by Julia.

Holbrook, Arizona – This piece shows that rock plateau that drops off so suddenly, where the walls of the mountain are revealing stripes of earth and the compression of layers and layers of time and settling. That just sits next to a completely flat land. It's like everything on the grass is bowing down to this plateau. The whole area feels completely still. I remember this very calm and grounded feeling in our car as we drove through, but it was this fleeting moment. We were in the car, going at this high speed, but the plateau was so constant and so grounded.

These 2021 landscape drawings are drawn later as I remember the impressions of the landscape during a 2020 road trip with my husband. We drove across country when we moved from California to New England. This was during the beginning COVID, as so many of us were left unable to afford city living and opted to move to the country or closer to family. I remember distinctly we left Los Angeles during the week of a wildfire... Wildfire smoke that itched our throats and that orange hazy sky was clouding up as we packed our last boxes into the moving truck and kicked up behind us as we drove away from the place and people we loved over the last decade. As we drove, the vast sky and arid landscapes of the West felt like fresh air to me. A fullness. But my impressions were so brief, as we drove through. Nothing was open because of COVID, not even national parks or state parks... so we just drove and drove, watching the hills go by from West Coast to East Coast. I watched the landscape from the car window and during the occasional break from driving. We took Route 66, which, as he tells me, was where my husband grew up in his first childhood home– a very old farmhouse from the 1600s. All of these stops are places on the road to our new home together.

Ships unframed. See framing suggestions below.