Fred Easker - Iowa Landscapes in Oil


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Introduction

I’ve been painting the landscape in Eastern Iowa for about 15 years and am still excited about the artistic possibilities in a part of our nation not widely known for its scenic beauty, or as Joni Kinsey described in her book Plain Pictures, a land seemingly without prospects.

Autumn View near Ivanhoe

This is Grant Wood country and I grew up and reside in Cedar Rapids, the city where the artist painted America’s most famous picture, American Gothic. While time and industrialization have not always been kind to the rural landscape painted by Wood and his friend Marvin Cone a couple of generations ago, it still offers visual bounty to those who are open.

I have spent nearly all my life here and yet I am still surprised and often startled, by the often subtle but nontheless stunning visual beauty to be discovered. A simple rural road, an insignificant creek, a swale providing a pathway for excess water through a newly plowed field, a rare grove of trees in a land of 100 acre fields and the gentle rolling land itself are the subjects of the paintings, sites that even Iowans rarely notice and often take for granted. Through careful observation of light and atmosphere and a somewhat transcendental attitude toward the world, my paintings are meditations on these discoveries from my part of the world. Though all the painitngs are of specific places and times, I hope their meaning is universal.

This site features a selection from the more than 150 landscape paintings which I have produced over the years and more will be added as new work is completed. Most of the paintings shown here are already in collections throughout the Midwest and elsewhere. Works which are available for purchase are indicated with an *. I welcome your comments about the work shown here. If you are interested in learning about work in progress or want to discuss a possible commission, please contact me.