Grassy Island Rocks - Oil Painting

Grassy Island Rocks

Oil paint on canvas

48" x 60"

$4,500

This is a dramatic painting of a rocky shore on Grassy Island on Rainy Lake in Northern Minnesota. This is the biggest painting I have created in the last few years. It was fun to paint big again. Its liberating to be able to make big strokes of paint without ruining anything. Smaller paintings demand more control. Also, it was a fun painting in that the surface has many layers showing. There are areas where the mineral spirit soaked paint drips down the canvas and leaves a wash, like in watercolor. There are other areas that are thick with paint, and yet other areas that have several thin layers of oil soaked paint on top of each other.  It was a very fun painting to make.

Landscape and food still life paintings and fine art prints are available at my new website: mark granlund.com. A 20% discount on all art for first time visitors/buyers.

Photographs: Water II

These are four more photos that are in the Project Art for Nature exhibit at the University of Minnesota at Morris starting at the end of this month. This first image is of tree reflections in the water on a sunny day. This is the first colorful water image I have taken and think that I will be exploring the richness of color in reflections in the future. I enjoy the fact that the water is in focus, but in places the reflections are not. This is a very fun piece.

This second photo is of reflections on a rather calm surface of water. If it were not for the dark reflections of pine trees, the ripples would not be visible. The black and white shapes in the water start to express a sense of yin/yang, but the eye is taken out of this by the two yellow sticks floating in the foreground. I also like the little bubbles and detris floating in the foreground. The contrast in the water was so high as evening was approaching, that the debris and bubbles look like a bunch of little dots. I also like that this photo is framed with a white mat. From a short distance the white of the photo starts to bleed into the mat.

These final two photos are of water lily pads on Rainy Lake. People living on Rainy Lake are starting to have problems with ecoli in the water. Every home on the lake pumps its drinking water from the lake. Residents are finding that they have to keep upgrading their filter systems as more development is happening. The evidence of problems is not just in the drinking water but in the lack of blooms on the lilypads. Each year it seems there are fewer and fewer blooms. This photo was taken in mid-to-late August and yet no blooms.
There are such things as indicator species - certain animals that are the first to be affected by pollution. Canaries were used in coal mines to indicate gas leaks. If the canary died, the humans had better leave the cave quickly. Frogs are considered an indicator species. Frogs will become malformed and die sooner than humans in an environment becoming hostile to life. I believe beauty is an indicator species when it comes to the human soul. Beauty will wilt and die in an environment becoming hostile to the human soul. I am serious when I ask "What is beautiful in your life?" I do want to know the answer. I also want to do what I can to create a healthy environment for our souls.

What's beautiful in your life?

Photographs: Water

I have been taking photographs of the Mississippi River as part of Project Art for Nature for the last year and a half. These photos have been resources for my paintings of the Mississippi, but I have come to enjoy the photos so much that I am framing them and hanging them in the PAN exhibit at the University of Minnesota at Morris. Displayed here are three of the seven photos.
Each PAN artist must choose two natural areas in which to work. My first site is the Mississippi River Gorge located between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul. My second site is the Review Islands on Rainy Lake along the Minnesota/Canada border, a protected grouping of four islands owned by the Oberholtzer Foundation. Both sites are defined by water and have been created by erosion from volumes of water rushing past rock as well as each tiny wave and ripple slowly lapping against shore. These three photos deal with ripples as pattern on the surface of water. One starts to sense the rugged surface of water which grates away the land. There is also a sense of the volume of water underneath this surface that is at work.

I took my photos and did very little in terms of editing or changing them for this exhibit. I just tweeked the contrast a little. They are framed in black metal frames with a ragboard matte. The prints themselves are on matte heavyweight archival paper. I did not want the sheen of photopaper as I felt that a matte paper would communicate the volume and density of the water better.

If you are in the Morris area between October 22 and November 27 please stop in and see the show. There are ten other wonderful artists in the exhibit and it promises to be quite a show.