DESTINASIAN.COM – AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019
120 SKETCHBOOK
Illustration by Bruce WhiteColorado-based artist and graphic designer Bruce White has drawn painterly inspiration from destinations
around the world, places such as Italy’s Amalfi Coast and the Costa Rican city of Puerto Limón. But it is the
landscapes of the Western United States that dominate his fine-art work. White’s adopted home state of Colorado
(he was born in Virginia and spent his teenage years in California) figures prominently in his portfolio, as
does neighboring Utah, where a houseboat cruise on Lake Powell a few years ago brought him to the natural
sandstone arch of Rainbow Bridge. “From the small dock where we tied off, it was just a 15-minute hike along a
waterside trail to my first view of this massive rock formation, which towers almost 90 meters above the creek
that flows beneath it,” the artist recalls. Considered sacred by the Navajo people, who know it as Nonnezoshe
(“Rainbow Turned to Stone”), the arch was designated a national monument as early as 1910, which White finds
easy enough to understand. “It stands alone as a stoic monument, but has clearly been formed in the same
rich, earthy colors as the vast landscape that surrounds it. Lake Powell has many spectacular sights along
its 3,000 kilometers of shoreline, but none are more majestic than Rainbow Bridge.”RAINBOW BRIDGE, UTAH