Luke Watson, “Land Valuation”

by Lynn Trimble

Vision Gallery, Chandler, Arizona

Continuing through March 21, 2026

Luke Watson, “A Vista,” 2025, oil on canvas. All images courtesy of Vision Gallery, Chandler, Arizona.

Arizona-based Luke Watson draws us into his world immediately upon entering his exhibition, “Land Valuation,” with a large-scale concave painting that echoes the panoramic views often sought by tourists in national parks or other iconic settings. Soon enough it becomes apparent that Watson’s landscapes have little in common with those postcard-style perspectives.

“A Vista” (all works 2025) is a layered landscape that not only directs our attention towards not only the physical forms replete in his body of work, but also to the different levels of meaning he intends them to convey. Watson paints a wide swath of sky sitting atop a row of clouds that float just above multiple layers of rocks comprising expansive land formations. Green plants with crystalline forms dot the landscape, their stylization offering a glimpse at the ways Watson often veers into surrealism.

Luke Watson, “Aspen (Glen),” 2025, oil on canvas.

Nearby, another large-scale painting, “Aspen (Glen),” introduces more fantastical imagery marked by excursions into vivid colors and stylized shapes. Conical trees resembling green tutus stacked on tall poles stand amid other foliage. Purple lines conjure pathways created by the movement of water or snow. Short green structures that resemble corrugated cardboard suggest walls — not man made, as one might expect, but implicitly by the creatures who reside in this forest. The natural environment, as Watson visualizes it, may be built, but is not merely the product of human hands.

Throughout the exhibition, which includes nearly three dozen works, are references and similarities to several Southwest contemporaries, including Ed Mell’s (1942-2024) angular abstractions and Steve Yazzie’s (Diné, Laguna Pueblo, and European ancestry) abstractions marked by movement and flow. The more distant echoes of Georgia O’Keefe, Vincent van Gogh, and Grant Wood, are among others the artist pays homage to.

Luke Watson, “SBBT,” 2025, oil on canvas.

The geometries of Watson’s mesas, rocks, rivers, mountains, and trees are rooted in three-dimensional puzzle pieces and pop-up children’s books. As noted in his statement, that process often involves “crafting paper models of landscapes and translating them into paintings that flatten complexity into planar simplicity.” The result both channels and counters forms found in nature, implying that what we see around us is always filtered through our own experiences and memories. Then he goes beyond that, speaking in paint to the ways our interactions with the environment change it. His aesthetic mission is to express how the natural world is in a constant state of transformation. The absence of human figures highlights Watson’s rejection of anthropomorphism. Instead, he center our attention on the land and its other cohabitants.

When they do appear, the human subjects are mainly engaged in leisure activities such as camping, cross-country skiing, and birdwatching. They sport the types of gear you would expect, from binoculars and bike helmets to tents and backpacks. This alludes to the fact that we ordinarily mediate our experience of nature by protecting ourselves from its overwhelming forces in order to exert a semblance of control over it, or passively to assume the role of observer.

Luke Watson, “Campsite,” 2025, oil on canvas.

Some of the figures in Watson’s paintings have a subtle cartoon or caricature quality, proportions slightly askew, such as a head that’s too large for its body, implicating the ways that self-perception is at odds with reality. When placed near foliage or clouds whose circular shapes resemble the iconic silhouette of Mickey Mouse ears, these people appear as humorous foils to the way experiences of nature are packaged and sold as leisure. 

At times we see only what humans have left behind, such as the all-terrain vehicle track marks in “SBBT,” its cloudy sky suggesting a gathering storm. In “Land Exploits,” with its tree trunks evocative of logging, and “Mine,” with its heavy equipment, Watson turns his attention to the impacts of industry on the environment. But the subtle tone of his imagery falls short of critiquing the damage wrought by extraction and exploitation.

Luke Watson, “Camp Fire” 2025, oil on canvas.

The exhibition’s most intriguing works are “Campsite” and “Camp Fire.” In the former, an owl is poised near a yurt-styled tent and given a glow that imparts the feel of an alien spacecraft. Tree branches have a robotic appearance that connects the impact of technology on nature itself, and the relationships between us and our environment. As to the latter, campers sit amid trees with foliage shaped much like megaphones, implying that the trees are somehow calling out or listening to the stories being told around the titular campfire.

A dozen or so small oil on panel paintings depict a bird such as a cactus wren, turkey, or kestrel against a simple backdrop. Despite their beauty, these works fail to animate Watson’s interrogation of geological and manmade forces that persistently change the landscapes they inhabit.

Luke Watson, “Fire Cycle,” 2025, oil on canvas.

Such questions are addressed more forcefully in “Fire Cycle,” a stunning panorama that fills an entire gallery wall. The artist conveys the resiliency of nature by combining imagery of post-wildfire devastation, new green forest growth, and the return of flames. Whether the fire might have originated with lightning or another natural cause, or with human actions such as building campfires, is left to the imagination.

Watson’s reimagined landscapes prompt reflection on the ways that infrastructure created to support interaction with what’s sometimes called “the great outdoors” favors those with sufficient economic means. But it also calls on all of us to recognize that those systems fail to build upon the full depth and breadth of historical and contemporary culturally-driven relationships with the land.

Lynn Trimble is a Phoenix-based art writer whose work ranges from arts reporting to arts criticism. During a freelance writing career spanning more than two decades, over 1,000 of her articles exploring arts and culture have been published in magazine, newspaper and online formats. Follow her work on Twitter @ArtMuser or Instagram @artmusingsaz.