There are moments in winter when the mountains feel newly imagined — when fresh snow softens every edge, color deepens in the cold air, and the familiar landscape becomes something quietly transcendent. It is within that spirit of renewal and wonder that Gallery MAR presents “Off Piste,” a breathtaking new solo exhibition by Colorado mixed media artist Sarah Winkler. As February brings a welcome return of snowfall to Park City, Winkler’s paintings echo that same sense of untouched beauty, inviting viewers into terrain that feels both intimate and expansive.

The title itself carries the hush of fresh powder and the thrill of departure. In skiing, “off piste” refers to leaving the marked runs and venturing into untouched terrain, where the path is uncharted and every turn is discovered in real time. In Winkler’s hands, the phrase becomes something more poetic: a metaphor for creative freedom, for stepping beyond expectation into raw and intuitive exploration. “It’s like a metaphor for where I am in this creative process,” she reflects. “Letting that same sense of freedom, intuition, guide the imagery, rather than having any rigid plans…just intuitively finding my way through the work.”

From her 9,000-foot-elevation studio in the Colorado Rockies, Winkler builds each painting through an intricate language of layered acrylic on wood panels. Texture itself becomes her signature mark-making, an evolving repertoire of gestures that suggest erosion, glaciation, snowfall, and thaw. The result is geological yet lyrical, each panel an excavation of time where snowy peaks, winding rivers, forests, and wildflowers coexist in a dynamic and interdependent whole.

Travel continues to deepen her visual imagination. A recent commission brought her to Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland’s Bern Canton, a valley famed for the 72 waterfalls that cascade into its alpine meadows. Immersed in thundering water and summer wildflowers, she absorbed the rhythms of this mountain landscape before translating that experience into paint. For Winkler, art and travel are inseparable, each journey expanding her sense of how terrain shapes light, color, and atmosphere.

Back home, the sky above has become an ever more commanding inspiration. “I’m just fascinated by the skies,” she says. “They’re so dry and clear, and you get those beautiful gradients.” Winter’s alpenglow, in particular, has captivated her eye, those fleeting blue-pinks and lavenders that hover above snow-covered ridgelines at dawn and dusk. She has committed to allowing these atmospheric gradients to play a central role in the work, bathing peaks and desert formations alike in a quiet, transcendent glow. The result is a breathtaking range of blue-pinks, lavenders, and alpenglow tones that shimmer above alpine ridges and desert formations alike.

Influenced in part by these pastel skies, Winkler’s use of color in this new body of work, has subtly shifted. Where earlier pieces leaned heavily into bold complementary contrasts, Winkler now finds harmony in analogous palettes with a single pop of tension. “I think now I’m just finding more peace and harmony in these analogous color schemes,” she explains, noting that the overall feeling is calmer, more serene. Pink, in particular, plays a starring role. “I’m channeling pink,” she laughs, even dyeing her hair and knitting a fabulously “outrageous neon pink mohair cardigan” for opening night. “Well, if you can’t have fun, go home.”

Beyond its playful surface, pink carries deeper resonance. Winkler reflects on its nurturing associations and the way soft pastels became a refuge to the heart and soul. Winkler muses, “Did you know that pink is not the color of romantic love, it’s the color of self-love? If you look into color theory, those ideas behind color, pink actually represents a nurturing, motherly-style love, so it has that feeling of coziness, like everything’s gonna be okay.” Winkler found that these rosy hues, as well as more floral and botanical elements, emerged from her practice more during the COVID years, altogether symbols of hope in uncertain times.

In “Off Piste,” Winkler channels those feelings of hope, renewal, and fresh excitement in the landscape, capturing not merely the appearance of Utah’s varied terrain, but the feeling of moving through it: the solitude of a high ridge at twilight, the hush before snowfall, the subtle tension between rock and river. Each painting holds that sense of discovery, of stepping beyond the expected and into something at once expansive and intimate.

Throughout her 11-year relationship with Gallery MAR, Winkler’s work and exhibitions have consistently pushed forward while remaining grounded in place. “I’m obviously thrilled to be back at Gallery MAR,” she says. “Maren always has an incredible eye for curating the work and the shows, and I love Gallery MAR’s exhibition openings. It always feels like a gathering of friends and a really good time.” That warmth was palpable at the opening on historic Main Street, where collectors gathered amid glowing peaks and luminous skies, celebrating both the artist’s return to Gallery MAR and the adventurous spirit of the work itself.

‘Off Piste’ is on view at Gallery MAR through early March. The exhibition invites viewers to move beyond the expected and familiar, linger in the unknown, and experience the quiet power of landscapes shaped by intuition, atmosphere, and the enduring forces of the natural world.

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Written by Veronica Vale