Minnesota native Kraig Thayer Rasmussen has been painting since he was a child. His large, atmospheric landscapes reflect a long and familiar relationship with the land and the seasons. For a decade, the artist lived on 120 acres in Northern Minnesota as a “back-to-the-lander,” without electricity or running water, growing much of what he ate in summer, painting in the winter.
“The impetus of my paintings is the mystery of the natural world,” Kraig states. “My work is strongly influenced by the rural landscapes where I grew up, lived and visit. My paintings have always been composed of primordial elements; flowing water, the flora growing along riverbanks, dense tangled undergrowth, forests with glimpsed clearings and panoramic vistas. I have a particular affinity for rivers: their backwaters, eddies and metaphorical endlessness. When I watch a river’s velvety, undulating flow of liquid light and shadow, I contemplate the ever changing yet never changing circle of life and death and the bittersweet, impermanent nature of our existence. My paintings allow me to work through personal issues and concerns for the environment.
For me, painting is a life long devotion and a portal between the physical and the metaphysical. How I feel about time spent in the woods, near lakes and rivers influences my paintings as much as what I actually see. In other words; rather than re-creating a landscape on the canvas, I attempt to express its essence. In some ways, my paintings are a record of my attempt to make visible this essence that seems just beyond my grasp. The process of painting triggers a state of being, and the painting expresses it. As in architecture; the subject isn’t really the glass and concrete but the space defined by them.
For a decade I tried to develop a responsible human relationship with the land. I lived an austere lifestyle. My day-to-day activities put me in direct contact with the natural world around me. Those years reinforced what seemed obvious to me as an adolescent; that the stones, trees, lakes and rivers are indeed alive and in flux, and have been long before and will be long after our brief lifetimes. That period changed my life and provided the spiritual catalyst for my current paintings.
The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. I hope my reverence for the natural world is conveyed in these reflective atmospheric meditations. The philosophy behind my paintings concerns our preoccupation with dominating nature versus being a part of the natural world. I want us to be more aware of the fragile, fleeting world on which our very existence depends.”
Kraig attended the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and has been an artist, arts activist, art teacher, museum curator, exhibit designer, arts administrator and gallery director. He has traveled to Austria, Italy, Greece, the British Isles, Mexico and Jamaica, researching landscapes and museums. His work is included in the collections of Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis; the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; and Wells Fargo Bank locations in Eden Prairie, Wabasha, and Wayzata, MN. He maintains a studio in White Bear Lake, MN.
