Moonrise at Gemini Bridges

MOONRISE AT GEMINI BRIDGES

Moonrise at Gemini Bridges Mural by Caro Nilsson on the Moab Brewery, Distillery north wall 

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The moon rises silently over canyon walls that sit like sentinels. This piece considers how the rocks have sat patiently and watched the world unfold for millennia, and we get to participate in a tiny part of these eons. We also get to bear witness to another perfect moonrise on a desert evening, let our feet explore the wash and discover that it isn’t so silent after all. There is something special about the desert at dusk, something sublime and unknowable. The Datura bloom and the grass draws its tireless wind circles in the sand, cautious creatures emerge alongside us like ghosts. It is an honor, to remember one’s place within and among landscapes.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Caro’s dream-like, impressionistic landscapes pull the viewer into a specific place that feels outside of time. Her paintings straddle the line between real and imaginary- understanding the notion that everything is always both. Caro paints primarily from memory, focusing more on the way a place felt than the facts of how it looked. In this way, memory morphs and heightens the shapes, shadows and colors of her landscape- blurring the facts in a way that feels more honest and true to the experience that it came from. At its heart, Caro’s work is about a personal relationship with landscapes, and all of the human and non-human influences and presences within them. Rooted in traditions of impressionism, Caro’s paintings depict worlds in which the act of observation (beyond just that of sight) plays a role in their creation. By simply noticing magic within the mundane, the world that we live in becomes full of mystery and excitement, a world of hidden stories, meant to be uncovered by those who take the time to listen. Caro was born in Vancouver, Washington and has spent her entire life building relationships with the land in America’s endlessly variable biomes- and translating those feelings and findings into paintings. She holds a B.A. in Fine Art with a Distinguished Major in Printmaking, and a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Virginia. She completed her first solo painting residency at the Dacha in Mystic, CT in the Spring of 2021, and currently lives as a multi-media painter and muralist, painting full time from Salt Lake City.