In southeastern Utah, artist Gilmore Scott sees stories written in shadow. From his home in Montezuma Creek, near Bears Ears National Monument, he translates the land’s rhythms and his Diné (Navajo) heritage into vivid, geometric paintings pulsing with motion.

His connection to art stretches back as far as he can remember. From grade school through high school, his love grew from drawing to painting, mixed media and fine art. Raised in Blanding, Scott watched his mother weave traditional rugs – hypnotic diamond patterns and zigzag designs filling the loom.

Today, he incorporates those motifs into his work, especially the “eye dazzlers,” diamond-shaped patterns that create an illusion of movement. “It’s my way of paying tribute to her,” Scott said.

Scott studied art formally at the College of Eastern Utah in Price and Utah State University in Logan until 1999. But his path took an unexpected turn when he joined the U.S. Forest Service during college. His seasonal job as a wildland firefighter became a nine-year career, where he learned to rappel out of helicopters and scour vast landscapes for the first signs of fire after lightning storms.

That high-altitude view reshaped how he saw both the land and the canvas. From a helicopter, gauging the scale of plants can be tricky, so Scott learned to read shadows. “A lot of my art pieces now cast big shadows across the canvas,” he said. “Scanning the horizon for nooks and crannies where smoke could come from helped me see the land a lot deeper.”

After leaving firefighting in 2010, Scott turned to painting full time. He developed a signature style blending evocative color with traditional Diné design. Hard geometric edges meet soft atmospheric washes in his acrylic and watercolor works.

In his painting “Monsoons Dazzle Over the Bears Ears,” housed in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the twin buttes of Bears Ears rise under swollen storm clouds. The monument, nearly 2 million acres in Utah’s southwestern corner, is deeply sacred to the Diné and other Indigenous peoples.

Unlike most depictions of Bears Ears from the west, Scott paints it from the east – the view he grew up with. From that side, two buttes and a flattened mesa form the snout. “That’s how I knew it. That’s how I show it,” he said.

Storms hold deep symbolic weight in Scott’s work. According to Diné oral stories, male storms arrive first – bold, thundering tempests that shake the earth and drive out winter. Then come the female storms, gentle and steady, soaking the soil. On canvas, his male clouds are dark and forceful; the females shimmer in soft blues and purples.

Scott’s dynamic use of color defies expectations. While desert art often leans on earth tones and muted pastels, his canvases explode with indigo skies, fiery orange sands, deep crimson shapes and bursts of turquoise. Low shrubs fleck the golden plains, and elongated silhouettes of women in moccasins and skirts dot the horizon. “When you’re out there early in the morning or the light hits just right – man, those colors pop. I just paint what I see,” he said.

As part of a matriarchal society, Scott strives to capture strong female presence in his work. Canvases like “Our Matriarch, Weaver of the Chiefs” show a woman’s legs leading sheep across the desert. Her skirt flutters in the colors of a monarch butterfly, symbolizing life’s transitions and the longevity of women in Diné culture.

Scott’s paintings have been featured at the Springville Museum of Art, St. George Art Museum, Chase Home Museum in Salt Lake City, Bluff Arts Festival and numerous Indigenous art markets around the state. But some works are shared only during certain seasons, in keeping with the traditions they depict. One such piece, “Ma’ii Bizo, bahané” (“Coyote’s Star Story”), tells a tale reserved for winter months.

Now a father of two daughters, Scott sees his art as a bridge between generations. “My art is just another extension of the way we tell stories,” he said. “I want them, and people who see my art, to feel Diné’s deep reverence for the land.”

From the vivid contours of Bears Ears to woven patterns passed down through his family, Scott’s paintings bind past to present in colors that will never fade.