Saddle Junction 18

A high mountain plateau in the San Bernardino National Forest near Palm Springs, California. Saddle Junction is a high plateau pass up on Mt. San Jacinto near Palm Springs. The melting snow punctuated by large boulders, streams, and vegetation makes for ever changing environment to draw from.

— Chase Langford

Saddle Junction, a high plateau pass above Palm Springs, offers a dramatically different environment from the desert below. Melting snow, exposed boulders, mountain streams, and vegetation continually reshape the landscape—elements Langford has described as sources for this series.

The painting’s predominantly white and pale gray palette suggests snow and weathered granite, while passages of turquoise, ochre, black, and earthy brown emerge like glimpses of water, stone, and vegetation. Long, undulating contours move horizontally across the canvas, recalling both geological strata and the topographic lines of a map. Saddle Junction 18 has a particularly meaningful relationship to Langford’s Whitewater Wash, acquired for the permanent collection of the Palm Springs Art Museum. Both paintings belong to Langford’s Morphic vocabulary and translate the geography surrounding Palm Springs into abstraction. Whitewater Wash evokes the broad alluvial terrain descending from the San Bernardino Mountains, while Saddle Junction 18 looks upward toward the alpine environment of San Jacinto.