The Grand Canyon is known first and foremost for its enormity, and Farmington artist Marilyn Taylor acknowledges that its sheer size, especially when viewed from the perspective of the rim, can be overwhelming.

But when Taylor chose to paint a series of scenes from her trip down the Colorado River through the canyon in 2018, a collection being featured in a new exhibition at the Farmington Museum at Gateway Park, it was the little things that caught her eye.

“The Inner Canyon: Rafting Down the Colorado River” is a series of 28 oil paintings that capture the canyon from perspectives large and small.

Taylor said she already had visited the rim probably 15 times. But when she had a milestone birthday approaching a few years ago, she decided to pull the trigger on a long-held dream and signed up for a 10-day, 276-mile river trip through the canyon on a pontoon boat.

That allowed her to see the canyon from the bottom up, instead of the top down. It also provided her with access to many of its lesser-known charms, especially its plant and animal life that she never could have seen from the rim.

Taylor brought along a camera, of course, and captured images she said she knew she would want to paint.

But she said it wasn’t until she got back home and started working that she decided to create enough paintings from the trip to make up a show.

“It was like I was still in the canyon,” Taylor said of the way she immersed herself in the project over the last few years.

Most of the paintings in Taylor’s show focus on terra firma, rather than the river itself, and she said her apprehension about the rapids she would encounter on the trip certainly gave her pause.

“I never had a desire to do the rapids,” she said, laughing.

Taylor made the trip in a large pontoon boat, so the experience wasn’t quite as adventurous as it would have been in a normal, smaller raft, she said. At one point, the boat did get lodged between two rocks, but the three women guides who were leading Taylor’s group quickly got the craft headed in the right direction.

Being on a pontoon boat instead of a raft not only allowed Taylor to feel safer, it afforded her the opportunity to fully take in the beauty of the canyon without being distracted. She marveled at the perfection of the light during certain times of the day and the way the towering canyon walls were reflected in the water.

Her favorite spot in the canyon was at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Little Colorado River, Taylor said. She described the water as a stunning aqua blue and said the inflow from the Little Colorado was so warm, she was able to get out of the boat and swim in it, even though it was only April. The confluence also features several waterfalls, she said.