Like you’re ‘walking into the painting’ | News

Before its Valentine’s Day private unveiling, Tucson artist Ignacio Garcia placed finishing flourishes – actually, stars made of tiny crystals – on “Twilight Sonoran,” his striking nighttime desert landscape mural now lighting up the long wall inside Tohono Chul Park’s Garden Pavilion.

“It’s pretty wild,” Garcia said as he finished the 1,200-square-foot, eye-level piece of public art. “It’s a fun piece.”

Guests at the Feb. 14 “I Heart Art” event agreed. They cooed and smiled while seeking out  details in Twilight Sonoran – hairs on tarantula legs, petroglyphs on dark stones, stars in the sky. Members of the public can search for themselves, and hear from Garcia, on Saturday, Feb. 28, during the official public unveiling at Tohono Chul, Oro Valley’s desert garden and gallery space.

“The goal is to make it feel as if you’re walking into the painting, to tap into your sensories, and give you that experience at an emotional level,” Garcia said. “It’s tricky. You have to see it to believe it. That’s the best way. It’s a personal experience, and I want people to come and look at it.”

Twilight Sonoran is a blue, black, and white panorama capturing iconic saguaros and their flowers, a Sky Island mountain range beneath towering monsoon clouds, cholla cacti and desert flora, Tohono Chul’s famous night-blooming cereus cacti, a leggy tarantula … and a grasshopper mouse, its torso arced toward a full moon.

“They’re known to howl,” Garcia said Feb. 5, during a break in his work. Carnivorous grasshopper mice are “quite interesting.” He likes to highlight “these little critters not many people know about. And not too many people know about the night landscapes.”

It is at once dramatic and serene. In Twilight Sonoran, Garcia is capturing “the breathtaking magic of the Sonoran Desert after dark — through the eyes of its creatures,” Tohono Chul said in a release. “The mural invites viewers to step into an animal’s perspective of the desert night, where late-summer monsoons roll across the horizon, stars shimmer in silence, and life glows softly beneath a moonlit sky.”

Garcia knows that sky. He was born in Agua Prieta, Mexico, raised across the U.S.-Mexico border, and “draws on his bicultural heritage and deep connection to place to create large-scale murals that pulse with life and meaning,” his biography reads. He’s painted nearly 50 public murals in greater Tucson, among them “Gnomes” at El Conquistador Tucson, A Hilton Resort in Oro Valley.

“Anything that’s nature and Sonoran culture and landscapes, I always feel happy to do things like that, to represent this culture,” he said.

Forty-two artists submitted proposals to create the mural, an idea conceived during Tohono Chul’s 40th anniversary celebration last April. The town of Oro Valley contributed $25,000 toward the project. Tohono Chul matched with both cash and in-kind contribution. 

Garcia was selected because his concept “beautifully captures how the Sonoran Desert comes alive at night,” Tohono Chul said.

In creating the mural, Garcia worked with park officials to “make sure it’s suited for the right purpose,” he said. “They know their audience, they know what they’re looking for. I want to magnify what they really, truly represent.”

Most of Garcia’s murals are on outside walls, where weather impacts the work and the surface. “It’s really nice to do an indoor mural on a large scale,” he said. “The wall is not as rough and beat up.”

With his vision in place, Garcia began painting Twilight Sonoran on Jan. 7, and spent no less than 60 hours and just under 10 gallons of paint turning a blank wall into an alluring desert landscape. He works alone, and only with brushes. “Once I’m locked in, I’m locked in,” he said.

At the Oro Valley Town Council meeting Feb. 18, Mayor Joe Winfield called Twilight Sonoran “quite remarkable,” and urged people to “go check it out.

“You have to go there to see it yourself,” Winfield said. “It’s a beautiful mural. It adds an incredible feature to this wonderful facility.” 

Garcia is “very critical of my own work. Most artists are never 100% satisfied on the end result,” he said. “I’m the same way. I accept it as it is, and enjoy it.”

When Garcia sees one of his murals, he feels “just blessed, beyond blessed to know Tucson has given me this opportunity to represent Tucson in this amazing way.”