Ya La'ford's Abstract Vision of Western Landscapes

Two years stuck at home during the COVID 19 pandemic had artist Ya La’ford (b. 1979) itching to return to her life of travel. When Ogden Contemporary Arts in Ogden, UT, an exhibition space and non-profit arts advocacy organization, contacted her with an offer to visit and participate in its artist-in-residence program in 2022, she was all about it.

Her husband, not so much.

“Why would we ever go to Utah,” La’ford remembers him asking. “What's there to see and why would you live there?”

La’ford is a first generation American of Jamaican descent born in the Bronx who lives in the Tampa, Fl area. Utah doesn’t typically spring to mind as a top destination for urbanite Black travelers. But she was stir crazy and the professional opportunity too good to pass up.

Her husband relented.

La’ford’s personal exposure to the American West at that point had been cowboy movies, Las Vegas, and a ski trip to Utah.

“I split my time between Florida, Maine and New York,” La’ford said. “I think I'm exploring much of America, when really, I missed a big chunk of it.”

Intent on making the most of the opportunity, the entire La’ford family – mom, dad, and two barely school aged sons – relocated to Ogden for three months, immersing themselves in the West.

“We decided that we wouldn't just go there, we would drive there with our Airstream and that we would – every single weekend we were there – go to the bordering states,” La’ford continued. “We went to Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.”

The artwork resulting from the experience can be seen now through May 18, 2025, at the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, FL.

Ya La’ford “Survey the West A Cross-Continent Refelction” at the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, FL. Photo by theephotoninja and The James Museum.

“This was my attempt to transport viewers into this geological history,” La’ford said. “What became interesting for me to weigh out was human life versus geological life. That was huge for me. Everyone focuses on a hundred years because that's typically what we have. We're not looking at thousands and thousands of years.”

During her time in the region, La’ford surveyed mountains, canyons and other geological features shaped over millions of years by heat, gravity, wind, and water. For “Survey the West: A Cross-Continent Refelction,” her abstract paintings and sculptures inspired by deep time capture the essence of place, prioritizing color, shape, texture, and emotion.

“The naked formations of the West were not only inspiring, they were magical,” La’ford said. “Spiral Jetty, or the Aztec ruins, you're looking at space. Not one acre, two acres, thousands of acres where you can see water, sunset, soils, how Native Americans are living, and how these spaces are respected; they’re sacred spaces that reflect their philosophies (and) maintain these spiritual connections to their ancestors. When I say naked spaces, spaces where you actually can feel the ripples of the souls of people and the respect that they have for anything that inhabits it.”

Artists from “back East” having transformative experiences “out West” is nothing new. It happened to the Taos Society of Artists. To Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe. To Judy Chicago and thousands of others. La’ford artistically expressing what she saw through abstraction, however, is highly unusual.

“(Abstract artists) try to find emotions that redefine moments, and when we're looking at abstract work, we're really pushing for an emotion,” La’ford said. “We're really pushing for a feeling. When an artist creates, we're not doing it with our hands, we're doing it with our soul and finding in a moment that the physical world can fade away.”

Her exhibition will be the first at the James Museum to display abstract art. A fresh take on the West and Western art.

Ya La’ford “Survey the West A Cross-Continent Refelction” at the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, FL. Photo by theephotoninja and The James Museum. 2

“During this residency, I wanted to challenge how we can reconceive boundaries through this historical process of surveying land, and that's why the show was named after surveying,” La’ford explained. “Beyond those draw lines, there is boundlessness. It challenged how I thought about boundaries. The West was a realization that there's natural wonders that gave me a new perspective, and it gave me an invitation to get involved in the protection and preservation of land and landscape and how beautiful this canvas is.”

Surprisingly, despite never having previously visited these places, many looked familiar. Arches National Park, Yellowstone, and parts of Navajo Nation reminded her of time spent in Morrocco.

“What I was able to do after visiting places like Four Corners, the Spiral Jetty, is take those experiences to inform the work that I created through natural pigmentation, through copper coating of my sculptures, referencing a kind of labyrinth that I continue to use that incorporated a more mountainous imagery and Western symbolism,” La’ford explained.

As for her family’s reception in Utah?

Beautiful.

“I felt an enormous shift in weight,” La’ford remembers. “It wasn't about whether I was African American or Jamaican or my exterior, all of a sudden, it was different dynamics there. There's different focuses there. I went with an open heart and mind, and was open to not only the land, but the people and the culture.”

The artist liked it so much, in fact, she and her kids continue returning to Utah each year for spring break.

“We want to buy a home there. Utah has become more home to me than I could have ever imagined,” La’ford said. “We have a special space in our heart, because that place actually represents freedom for us. We were trapped in our house for two years and when we went there, we got new sensations, and it was even more impactful.”