Artwork Detail

Titled Devil's Punchbowl Wildlife, the mural depicts an imaginary scene from the arroyo at the bottom of the Devil's Punchbowl loop trail, showing local plant and animal species. Creatures include the western toad, gopher snake, darkling beetle, gray squirrel, western fence lizard, black bear, striped skunk, bees, monarch butterfly, roadrunner, coyote, tarantula, scrub jay, the California quail, red-tail hawk, silk moths, bushtit, mule deer, bobcat, and jackrabbit. Plants illustrated are the Agave, Sycamore, Fremontia, California Buckwheat, Manzanita, Sagebrush, and Pinyon Pine. The rock formation from the trail is shown in the distance, and the colors taken from the area are reminiscent of vintage posters and postcards.

Aaron Morse was born in 1974 in Tucson, Arizona, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his B.F.A. in 1996 from the University of Arizona, Tucson, and his M.F.A. in 1998 from the University of Cincinnati, OH. Morse is as influenced by the geography, history, and mythology of the Southwest as he is by the language of advertising, collage, and comics. His compositions combine all these elements in colorful and complex layered artworks akin to epic illustrations and surreal, alternate worlds where time is often ambiguous. His scenes are often envisioned from above or in cross-sections. His combination of soft, bright colors that he has sourced from the surrounding areas with tangled imagery invites the viewer to slow down and grasp a bigger picture that exists somewhere between reality and fantasy. Morse's work is in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. To learn more, visit: https://www.aaronmorse.com/