Frank Huff, “Parking Lot,” 14 x 18 in.

It’s almost like Frank Huff, Jr. dares you to dismiss his work. Or part of it. Take, for instance, his painting of a nondescript parking lot. Why bother? It’s not some social commentary, à la Joni Mitchell, paving paradise and all that. There’s no real judgment here. It’s a rather mundane, suburban parking lot, divided by islands of green, trees to the back. Judging by the shadows, it’s midday. The purple mountains in the background give it a little context—the American West, let’s assume— and a touch of grandeur maybe. Why bother with this scene? It’s not exactly an ugly scene, but it’s not particularly exciting either. And there’s nothing in its execution to jazz it up—no self-indulgent brushwork, the glint of sunshine or rain on asphalt, built up by gooey layers of oil paint. The paint is rather flat. The details are minimal.

And this painting is not a one-off. Look through Huff’s current exhibit at David Ericson Fine Art in Salt Lake City and you’ll find a rather dingy corner of downtown Salt Lake City, several more parking lots, a painting of concrete planters framed by a sidewalk and another glorifying the raised interchange of the interstate highway.

Born in Salt Lake City in 1958, Huff first learned to paint from his father, Huff Sr., a commercial artist. In the early ‘80s, he studied with Earl Jones, Alvin Gittins and Tony Smith at the University of Utah, and a few years later with David Dornan and Paul Davis. After some early successes at festivals and encouragement from galleries, he began painting full-time, mostly on site, whether in the city, the suburbs or the mountains.

“Monument Valley,” 24 x 30 in.

In the David Ericson show you will find plenty of paintings of more photogenic locales, scenes from the American Southwest where Huff now lives (St. George), the reds and purples of shadowed sandstone contrasting with fluffy clouds and bright fields of sand and sagebrush. You’ll find majestic, grand views of deep desert canyons, harking back to late 19th- and early 20th-century painters of the American West. If you like these scenes, you’ll enjoy Huff’s painting of them. But in a world of landscape painters, these are not what stand out, as fine as they may be. Rather, it’s his tendency, a quirk if you will, of painting these parking lots and strip malls, odd corners and neglected nooks—seemingly dull and boring—of our built environment.

There is something intriguing in what Huff holds back. He’s not some minimalist guru (which can be as self-indulgent as the maximalists), but he does hold back, looks for the bare bones. A watercolorist and an oil painter, he was the former before the latter and you’ll find the sensibility of watercolors in his oils, which are brimming with light and avoid belabored surfaces. His compositions, though well managed and balanced, are not—usually—particularly detailed. There’s more than a little Edward Hopper in his simplified forms and unadorned manner. And a tendency to paint the mundane in a new light. There’s something off kilter about some of his compositions, and yet they hold together remarkably well. This fact stays with you, even as you move on to the next work.

The clocktower of the City and County Building identifies this urban scene in watercolor as Salt Lake City.

Even in the desert, Huff seems to challenge himself, and his viewers, looking for something in the turn of a muddy wash. You might think, Surely, if he’d hike a little further or lift his head up to the horizon he would find something more “appealing.” But this is where he plants his easel, attracted by these simplified geometric planes and the subtle shifts in color. Just as he might plant his easel in front of a strip mall or old motel. He relies neither on bravura brushwork nor detailed realism to carry his work. Rather line and a subtle attention to atmosphere. Huff understands that there is truth in composition. A truth that can transform a parking lot.

Simplicity has its charms and Huff is a charming painter. There’s something about his not showing off every trick you might think him capable of that keeps these works in your mind. This charm serves the artist well as, according to Ericson, Huff is losing his eyesight. He has turned, à la Matisse, to paper cutouts, a shift that works rather seamlessly with his deceptively simple style.

If you’d like a splendid, bright painting of Utah’s desert landscape, something to inspire wanderlust or to dazzle your friends, you could do worse than to pick up a Frank Huff at David Ericson. But while there, take a moment, also, to look in the corners and on the floor. Spend some time with his less spectacular scenes. And see if you can ignore them.

In his most recent work, Frank Huff has turned to paper cutouts to depict the American West.

Frank Huff, David Ericson Fine Art, Salt Lake City, through Aug. 10

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.