Sonoran Spring
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
The work's title,"Sonoran Spring", refers to the season when this rugged landscape is at its most colorful. Waid uses his work as a chance to explore the unique structure of each species of desert plant, and to depict how they collectively survive the harsh desert terrain.
Waid has created an image filled with the various shapes and movements that evoke the patterns, textures and shapes of land and botanical forms in the desert. His colors range from the iron reds and blacks of volcanic flows that solidified as they once spread across the landscape, the blues and green of mineral deposits, the various greens of plant life, to the amber-yellow sands of the desert floor. These are supplemented with more brilliant spots of color that occur in the desert such as flowers, butterflies and birds.
The artist's energetic handling of the pigment mirrors the life that he depicts. He combines an interpretation of the natural world with a painterly, dense overall patterning that captures both the space and openness of the landscape and the detail of the life that inhabits it.
