Navajoland 1972

David Chethlahe Paladin made this striking, mystical landscape, “Navajoland,” using sand-based paint, creating a visual metaphor for the land itself. I can almost see him there, squatting down close to the ground, carefully applying the grainy material in layers. He’s working from memory, feeling the colors of the desert and the shapes of the mesas in his mind. There’s a kind of soft glow about it, which isn’t to say it’s sentimental. No, it’s more that everything is rendered with a kind of stylized simplicity, like a memory of a place. I see hints of Agnes Martin in its meditative geometry, while at the same time the subject matter is so specific to Paladin’s own culture. The painting feels like a conversation between representation and abstraction, where each informs the other, allowing us to see the world in new and unexpected ways.