H. Francis Sellers has placed the Union Pacific Depot in the center of his painting of Park City as it once was. In this middle time of the town's history, the old Victorian Depot has a rickety little fence and yard full of unraked autumn leaves. The tracks that used to carry passengers to Ogden and Salt Lake are missing form the dirt roads threading Park City. The old Coalition Building looms in the background in a similar neglected condition, while the depot makes false claims about its ability to provide tickets to anywhere. The buildings seem to be reminiscing about their past, when they were the bustling hub of the town's vibrant mining industry. The depot has no clue that it will once again be central in a later industry in the town's history. But in this scene, the Sundance Film Festival is years away. The town's future as a center for ski resorts and travelers is a distant dream, and for a few years Park City is a sleepy little mountain town.
Friends and museums alike tend to describe Utah watercolor painter H. Francis Sellers' personality before his paintings. He was a legendary figure who friends described as fun-loving, irreverent, and larger-than-life. Born in Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1937, Sellers studied art at Brigham Young University. He was a watercolor painter with a traditional style, but he wasn't necessarily interested in traditional subject matter. While he started out painting large works, he ended up painting almost exclusively miniatures- a creative evolution born of pragmatism. Sellers wrote: "when I painted large, often I would do a thumbnail sketch. Some would be very interesting. I began to apply paint to these sketches and enjoyed the final product much more than working large." Working small was also practical for an artist who spent so much of his time on the road. He made his home in the Salt Lake Valley, though he would spend as much as half the year away from home, exploring the San Rafael Swell, helping out on dinosaur digs, getting into mischief, and gathering new tales to recount of his adventures around Utah. He was an epic storyteller. But as wonderful a character as the artist was, his paintings stand on their own. He passed away in 2011. In his day, H. Francis Sellers was both a notorious and beloved figure whose precise watercolors were highly sought after by collectors.
