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Mississippi River Views

Most of my paintings since 1990 are based on the rural landscape within an hour drive from my home. A gently rolling former prairie, I am attracted to its melodious, abstract and subtle beauty which despite man’s intervention evokes a subdued and understated energy. It is an area to which I remain connected because it is where I grew up. I have worked to develop a personal response to this familiar environment, endeavoring to make something extraordinary from what is so familiar and from what some say is a banal or plain landscape.

However in the the last few years, I have increasingly spent more time in Northeast Iowa, a less subtle landscape with larger geological features and large areas untouched by the smoothing action of glacial drift and bordered by the Mississippi River.

Few would find it banal and there is something primal about the Mississippi River itself. The great river is home to hundreds of species of wildlife and is a timeless path for waterfowl and other birds in their annual migrations. Before the earliest European explorers found and used it to establish trade routes that evolved into major transportation systems, the river had supported indigenous populations for centuries and their ancient burial sites dot it’s lofty shoreline.

But it is perhaps also the larger sense of space in the landscape near to and including the Mississippi that draws me to the area. The depiction of space has always been of great importance in my landscape paintings. I’ve recently purchased property within a half block of that great river. I love the eagles and barges and ever changing light on the great pools created by the lock and dam system. I feel at home there. In terms of my art I am bringing a prairie vision to a strikingly different landscape, trying to understand it and trying not to appear the tourist. What follows is the early result.