How does a painter from the Bay Area end up choosing to capture Utah cityscapes on canvas?

“I went to the U.,” said Aaron Memmott, one of the artists selling his works at the Utah Arts Festival. Memmott got his BFA at the University of Utah in 1997.

But there’s another reason: “He met a Utah girl,” said Penelope Moore, who is that girl. Moore, who’s also a painter, grew up in Utah. She and Memmott met in art school in San Francisco. They’ve been together for nearly 10 years.

Memmott’s canvases capture city vistas in both San Francisco and Salt Lake City (including images of the old Utah Theatre on Main Street, and the old Zephyr Club). “They’re both great towns,” he said.

“Our hearts are here,” said Moore, who has displayed work at the Utah Arts Festival in past years but was rejected this year. “Downtown Salt Lake has come so far since I grew up here, with restaurants and the freaking train.”

Memmott and Moore often paint side by side, and sometimes trade oil paintings for vacations. They recently spent six weeks in the south of France, and once got lodging at a Malibu bridal suite for a month. (Besides life and painting, Memmott and Moore share a website, and are both represented by Park City’s Gallery MAR.)