Crowe Farm Retreats : BOB CROWE
On Display 11 May - 10 June 2018 in the Main Gallery
On Display 11 May - 10 June 2018 in the Main Gallery
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“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.” |
