As a child growing up in the concrete canyons of New York City, Bruce Aiken dreamed of someday living at the end of a long dirt road. Little did he know that this road would lead 5½ miles down a narrow, steep trail into the depths of another canyon—the Grand Canyon. Nor could he predict that he would live in this unlikely place for over thirty years.

In a remote side canyon along a stream that ultimately flows into the Colorado River, Bruce and his wife Mary raised three children while he tended Grand Canyon National Park’s precious water supply at Roaring Springs below the North Rim . . . and painted. Out of this intimate relationship between the artist and his muse came a body of work unparalleled in the annals of Grand Canyon landscape painters.