The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Landscape artist Matthew Moore modeled a 35-acre plot of sorghum and wheat on a housing development going up near his family’s Arizona farm. Moore is part of the nomadic Colorado Art Ranch, which takes up residency this month in Steamboat Springs. His work is on display at K. Saari Gallery. (Matthew Moore/Courtesy)

Steamboat Springs — When commercial and residential development started to creep in on the plot of land Matthew Moore’s family has farmed for the past four generations, Moore struggled with the encroachment.

To a point, he knew that keeping a farm going since the 1920s in a desert west of Phoenix wasn’t natural. But the introduction of suburban development raised some new thoughts.

“I was really angry with that tract,” he said of the shift in landscape as seen in photos taken from his father’s airplane. “But when I started to take these photos, I saw these farms are just like lots.”

This month, Moore will live and work in Steamboat Springs as part of Colorado Art Ranch, a nomadic organization that provides residencies for visual and literary artists and hopes to spark discussion on the crossover between the arts and social issues such as land stewardship.

His work, alongside gouache paintings by Carrie Marill, opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. today at K. Saari Gallery. Both are staying at the Nature Conservancy-owned Carpenter Ranch.

Marill, whose work at the gallery focuses on threatened, endangered and extinct species, said the Art Ranch project is an experiential break from her normal method, which involves heavy research and expert sourcing.

“Coming to Colorado Art Ranch and to Steamboat is going to give me an opportunity to work from what I find and see and hear,” Marill said. Her intricate paintings in gouache, a medium similar to thick watercolor, are intended to create “quiet, elegant worlds” to draw the viewer in, she said. Once Marill has a spectator’s attention, the background of the painting explains what’s going on.

Marill and Moore aren’t yet sure where to focus their Art Ranch residency projects, — the two just got into town earlier this week — but both are drawn to Hayden Station, which burns near Carpenter Ranch.

“It’s like three levels of ecology — I don’t know if you could quantify a power plant as ecology, but the transition I find very intriguing. … It’s this beautiful scene, unhindered ranch and then the power plant,” Marill said. “So it’s great fodder to work from.”

Moore said the power station presents a question similar to the housing development that prompted him to plant 35 acres of sorghum and wheat in the same pattern as homes being built on land near his family farm.

“I don’t have any answers, I just have a lot of questions, and I present those questions through my art,” Moore said. He hopes to bring up ideas about land stewardship from different sides of the issue.

“It’s about staying on both sides of the coin. It’s not saying that the power plant is the worst thing that has ever happened, and it’s not saying that the Nature Conservancy is the best thing since sliced bread,” he said.

“I like to kind of dig around in that.”