Barbara McIlrath’s current body of work is centered on two locations: the village of Old Frontenac which sits along the Mississippi and the rural Hicks Valley which neighbors McIlrath’s studio and home in Pepin. For McIlrath, the artistic process begins when she first becomes aware of a unique feature in the landscape. She then spends time lingering and wrestling with her observations. Ultimately, McIlrath comes full circle by creating the painting and revealing something new.

The paintings in this exhibition illustrate places and objects that populate Fred Anderson’s everyday life, from still lifes to street corners. Taken as a group, this exhibition acts as a painter’s journal, a record of memorable encounters with light, composition, and landscape. Anderson approaches his subjects, whether interiors, exteriors, or still lifes, in the same manner – painting in place. He begins and finishes his paintings on site, sometimes returning to the same place at the same time over several days.

For Joshua Cunningham, this new body of work encapsulates a season spent returning with fresh eyes to familiar scenes in search of the unfamiliar. Cunningham is seeking out the landscapes that have been described in stories shared by strangers, neighbors, and friends. He sees this exhibition as a season of circling back. Work for this show began after the artist’s father’s death in 2017. His father had been a fervent supporter of his work, and Cunningham leaned into painting as a way of keeping close to his father’s memory.

Fascinators by Ellen Heck is a series of portraits in which the sitters are wearing Möbius strips and other mathematical or paradoxical figures as hats. Reminiscent of fascinators, these forms could only be worn and held convincingly in the two-dimensional world of the print. Using combinations of woodcut, drypoint on copper, and hand painting, the flatness of the figures is contrasted with the dimensionality of their headpieces. A narrative begins to open up between the adorned female figures and the Möbius, used by the artist as a physical manifestation of abstract or invisible concerns.

Amy Rice’s artwork presents wildlife at its fullest. Her affection for the outdoors manifests itself in vibrant reds, yellows, purples, blues and greens – from rolling fields of flowers ready to be gathered to isolated flora depicted stem, root, and all. Having studied the anatomy of flowers and invested time into growing her own, Rice’s work is both a study and celebration of her wild subjects.

Groveland Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, Sense of Place.  This exhibition was curated in collaboration with the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine. The show coincides with the November-December 2018 Sense of Place edition of this popular magazine which is published by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.  Both the magazine and the exhibition will feature artwork by eleven Groveland Gallery artists each of whose artwork takes inspiration from the natural world that surrounds us and defines Minnesota.

As the titled implies, for this exhibition Kit Wilson has focused her attention along the shoreline. Near water is where she is most at home and where Wilson has long found the subject matter for her paintings. Water in all forms and during all seasons captures her attention. With a sharp eye and near photo realist paint handling, she examines various bodies of water and shorelines – a languid velvety lake on a summer night, crusty ice along the edge of a river, or a hypnotic assortment of smooth rocks and pebbles recently washed by a wave.

For over 20 years, the North Shore of Lake Superior has been a favorite and frequently visited location for Holly Swift. Abstract and loosely painted on a framework of geometry, Swift’s work knits together scenes of the rugged North Shore landscape. The paintings in this exhibit reveal the many variations of weather and mood which make the North Shore so compelling.

Included in this exhibition will be over a dozen landscapes on paper. Each image has been composed within a square format and Dan Bruggeman has chosen to place the horizon in the center of the composition, lending equal importance to sky and land. According to Bruggeman, each vignette that inhabits these paintings, “resides in a larger, more panoramic vista; one that is defined by an even more dramatic expanse of sky and land that meet at the edge of our vision.”

In earlier work, Dan O’Kane’s painterly abstractions were shaped by the big-sky and rolling plains of his childhood Nebraska home. In this new series, O’Kane’s composition choices were inspired by three separate trips to the Mediterranean, two to Spain and one to France.

The Groveland Gallery Plein Air SmackDown returns for its 8th year. This year, 20 gallery and guest artists will be painting en plein air on and around the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock & Dam. This year’s event is being held in partnership with the National Park Service and Mississippi Park Connection, the Friends Group of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA).

Since Ancient time, and throughout art history, including the Renaissance, Romanticism, Impressionism, and into Contemporary times, artists have been compelled to paint and interpret the landscapes that surround them. In Minnesota, sky, land and water are akin to the primary colors when it comes to landscape painting.