The Sears Art Museum at Utah Tech University will host a new group exhibition titled Fractured Lands / Fractured Narratives, according to a Nov. 5 report from the St. George Chamber of Commerce. The exhibition features eight artists from Utah and Idaho whose work challenges traditional approaches to landscape painting by exploring the intersection of abstraction, landscape, and human narratives.
The exhibition is scheduled to open on Nov. 13 with a public reception held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. It will remain on view through Jan. 8, 2027. Participating artists include Shelly Coleman, Micah Henrie, Tyler Tne Huntzinger, Aaron Cordell Johnson, David Mensing, Matt Pectol, Barry Scharf, and Steve Sheffield.
Each artist in the exhibition was asked to consider whether their abstract landscape paintings are driven by formal choices or by metaphor. This prompt encourages artists to explore whether their work emerges from formal elements like color, composition, texture, and gesture, or from the ideas and experiences that landscapes evoke.
Sears Art Museum Director and Curator James Peck described the collection of works as contemporary realism. Peck stated that while landscape painting is traditionally associated with depicting a specific place, abstraction allows artists to explore less tangible elements such as memories, experiences, and ideas projected onto the land.
The exhibition aims to explore how meaning is created through the act of looking and whether meaning is deliberately constructed or emerges through the act of painting itself.
The featured artists represent a region defined by complex cultural landscapes and dramatic geology, including mountain ranges, expansive deserts, and fractured rock formations. Rather than documenting specific locations, the exhibition focuses on how artists transform their experiences of the landscape into visual statements.
The exhibition is free and open to the public at the Sears Art Museum, located in the Dolores Dor Eccles Fine Arts Center on the Utah Tech University campus. The museum is located at 155 S. University Ave. in St. George and is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., though it is closed on university holidays.
