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Artist statement
After considerable self reflective writing as part of an advanced degree and
a regular forty- mile commute from my home to the university, I discovered
how important the Iowa landscape is for me personally. In 1990 I began to
explore the landscape as subject for new paintings, a direction I would not
have predicted. While it might seem inevitable that an unabashed realist
who spent many childhood summers on an Iowa farm would come to paint Iowa
landscapes, I came to them only after concentrated and successful periods of
work in other genres--first the figure and then still-life. For one who
takes great delight in seeing and rendering the wondrous subtleties observed
in faces, figures and still-life objects, the relative vastness of the
landscape initially seemed daunting.
I grew up in what seems now to be the golden 50’s of the last century in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the town where Grant Wood painted America’s most famous
picture, American Gothic. His Young Corn hung in the halls of my junior
high school. While initially not a particular admirer of that artist’s
work, I have come to realize how much he said about Iowa and Iowans. I do
feel connected to his art and the ethos of his time through the significant
adults in my early life--my parents and their friends who were children of
the Great Depression and who came of age during WWII. They too were of
modest means, used to making do, no, making the best of what was available.
It was a small town environment, and my persona and ultimately my art was
influenced by access to open spaces --the empty lot next door and the
nearby "hills", as we called them, several acres of timber and unused
pasture where kids explored, built forts and felt free. And there were the
summers spent enjoying and imagining in the half-used farm buildings, junk
piles and open spaces which belonged to one of those depression era farmers
and his wife (who could have posed for the daughter depicted in American
Gothic.)
As I grew into adolescence and became more aware of the world outside of
Iowa, mostly through the public schools and movies, it seemed that other
people in other places lived a finer life than was available to me.
Perhaps because I had a loving family, perhaps because the general
environment embraced me and probably because I felt connected, I chose to
remain here. As an artist, that does not mean that I am closed to ideas
from outside the Midwest, but I believe it does require that I use the
resources here and to make the best of them. That is, to make something
extraordinary from something that seems quite ordinary.
Most of my paintings are based on the rural landscape within an hour drive
from my home. I am connected to the area and to the places painted. I have
worked to develop a personal response to this familiar environment and I
continue to savor the visual richness. To my mind and heart there is in this
gently rolling former prairie a melodious, abstract and subtle beauty that
is timeless despite man¹s intervention and it evokes a subdued and
understated energy. While the paintings depict specific places, the sites
are mostly chosen for how they reveal these central qualities.
Initially, the images were discovered and drawn mostly from the Iowa spring
when the rolling hills, wet grasses, freshly plowed fields and morning light
create abstract visions and thoughts of new beginnings--a time of great
personal resonance. More recently, I have been excited by the Iowa autumn
with its sometimes intense, startling colors as well as the subdued, nearly
monochromatic textures of fields and roadsides revealed by warm afternoon
light. I am intrigued as well by the evocative quality of roads and streams
moving into unknown places.
Space is of great importance in my landscape paintings. To enhance it I
sometimes stretch the paintings horizontally beyond practical limits. In
addition, I want the observer to be drawn into that traditionally depicted
space by attention to detail as well as by the intimate and painterly manner
in which the images are created in order to discover and experience the
visual delights which are ellusive to the more casual observer.
The paintings are much less photographic than they appear when reproduced at
a reduced size and most have a non-photographic, palpable sense of space. It
has been my experience that this work evokes a spiritual response from many
viewers, a response beyond the appreciation of the perceived technical skill
of the painter or their personal familiarity with the subject matter.
While I have been made aware of artistic possibilities based on the
landscape where I live by my mid 20th century Iowa predecessors, Grant Wood
and Marvin Cone, I am informed by the meditative qualities of Mark Rothko,
the energy-from-within character of many of Jackson Pollock’s drip
paintings, and the abstract visual stories told within a larger formal
structure of the 1980's paintings of Joseph Raphael. I have an affinity as
well for Minimalism and from my still-life days, the sublime subtleties of
color and structure seen in the work of Morandi. Perhaps most importantly,
many 19th century paintings by the Hudson River artists and the Luminists
simply just take my breath away.
I believe that the art object, no matter its physical appearance, is a
metaphor for the artist. On my canvases are images of the Iowa countryside
but more importantly for me, my paintings represent me in the world. They are
my story. I endeavor to tell an honest one.
Fred Easker, 2004
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