"Road to Sedona" Print

I was born in Utah, USA in 1947. I began my professional art career in 1970. I have taught art and worked in various art-related fields my entire professional life. While in England, in the early 1970's, I was the principle artist for an international magazine. Although I studied art both privately and at the University of Utah, I am mostly self-taught. My first recognition as an artist came when I was in grade school and won first prize at the annual exhibit at the Old Mission School at San Juan Capistrano, CA. I have also co-founded a mining company, a graphic arts company, a decorating company, a jellies and jam company, was an army officer and a ski instructor. Aside from painting, I also invent things, write poetry, and manage a business. I have written a book about the creative process and I am studying and teaching martial arts. I stay busy. During the last uranium boom of the 1970's, I co-owned and operated a mining and exploration company, North American Resources Corp. based in Salt Lake City, operating out of Moab, Utah. I prospected, staked claims, drilled, and promoted uranium properties all over the Colorado Plateau. Once, I even confronted armed claim jumpers. Shades of the Old West. I wheeled and dealed with claim owners and major energy companies often doing million dollar deals on napkins into the wee hours. During this period, I met the late mining magnate, adventurer, and avid art collector, Maxie L. Anderson (the first balloonist to cross the Atlantic Ocean). He liked my work so he commissioned and purchased various paintings including the original oil painting "Red Canyons" which was the basis of the "Red Canyons" serigraph that President Reagan displayed in the White House and which appeared on an episode of the "Murder She Wrote" TV show.Living and working in canyon country, I was instantly captivated by the amazing red rock vistas around Moab. I started doing photo studies and sketches of the scenes I encountered prospecting in the area. When I returned to Salt Lake City, I turned some of these studies and sketches into paintings- something I still do today.In late 1987 I "fathered" a new art form I call "Multi-Dimensionalism." This user-interactive, total-experience art form is so unique that I was granted a U.S. patent for it in 1990. Of this new art form, Vern Swanson, Director of the Springville Museum, wrote ". . . I was captivated by the beauty, peacefulness and stimulating quality of Blackburn's creation.