Colorado

BEHIND THE IMAGE

Picture the state of Colorado in your mind’s eye right now – and what do you see? If you are like a lot of people, you are imagining rugged, snow topped mountains, dense green forests and alpine meadows. This is the typical landscape that people imagine when they think of Colorado. Fewer people imagine seeing the desert landscape found in the artwork Colorado.

Truth be told, almost half of the vast state of Colorado has a desert landscape. In western Colorado you will find deserts, mesas, canyons, plateaus and basins. There are some amazing desert landscapes to be experienced in Colorado. The most popular desert sites can be found at the Mesa Verde National Park, the Dinosaur National Park and the Great Sand Dunes National Park – with the largest sand dunes in the United States.

Like the varied landscape found in this state, the climate can vary a great deal from region to region. The climate found in Colorado is complex because of the ever changing geography that varies from high plains to foothills, to mountains and deserts. Generalizing, it can be said that the higher elevations have lower temperatures and higher amounts of precipitation, but the variety of elevations and other factors make the climate very diverse, changeable, and complicated to predict. When you imagined Colorado, you may have seen snow on mountains, but did you imagine snow in a desert scene? Well, snow can occur in the deserts of this state – as beautifully captured in this example of Colorado wall art.

Colorado captures the crisp clear air of a snow covered desert landscape in Colorado. Wisps of clouds pass through a clear blue sky that overlooks a rugged, majestic mountain on a snow covered desert plain. Looking at Colorado, you can imagine the chill in the air and the surreal feeling of being in this vast desert landscape that is surprisingly covered in snow.