Crowe Farm Retreats : BOB CROWE
​​On Display 11 May - 10 June 2018 in the Main Gallery
“I spent most of my early years in retail sales and interior design. During this period I was painting artistically and doing faux finishes in my spare time.

I became frustrated with retail sales and yearned for a different way to express myself. To that end I returned to Fargo to finish a long overdue art degree at Minnesota State University Moorhead. While finishing my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree I did some teaching at the Creative Arts Studio in Fargo. There I met and became friends with Robert E. Kurkowski. Through Bob I fell in love with teaching kids. After getting my B.A. I decided to go for a Bachelor of Science Degree in Education. While completing this degree I met and became friends with Carl Oltvedt and Dan Jones.

Carl and Dan introduced me to plein air painting. Plein air is painting on location, outside, while looking
directly at your subject. This way of painting has a long history, most of the great Impressionist and Expressionists painted this way. The three of us became close friends and began to paint together often. Through Carl and Dan I learned to appreciate our lakes area and the Red River Valley.

These subjects became my major focus for the last nine years. During this period I was doing realistic local landscapes and farmscapes in local color. Local color to me means the color you see before you in nature. For the last three years I have been concentrating on abstraction these local images and pushing the color as far as I can. The result is what you see before you. Bright, brilliant color imposed on simple shapes and forms. These images, I hope, resonate childhood and local memories at the same time dazzle our eyes with color.”