My paintings depict the skies, land, rivers, lakes, and strong honest farm buildings of the Midwest countryside. They celebrate the beauty and the importance of a landscape that is often overlooked and underappreciated—flyover country, as it's sometimes called. While the Midwest landscape is typically more subtle than spectacular, it is nonetheless profound.

Skies are of particular interest to me. Over time, they have come to occupy more and more of the painting surface until now my favorite proportion is one fifth land to four fifths sky. Often the land will be perfectly flat, which emphasizes the expanse of sky even more. I am fascinated by the constantly changing and infinite variety of abstract forms and colors in the sky and land.

There is a sense of continuity in painting the land and farms that would have been familiar to my great-grandfather, who homesteaded the virgin prairie of Western Minnesota. However, much of what once was....is now gone or rapidly disappearing—the prairie ecology, wetlands, and barns for example. Perhaps what is left can be considered worth saving, if it is seen with new eyes.

Each new painting is an adventure, partly planned but ultimately a mystery. In working on a painting, a delicate balance is needed between too much controlling and too much letting go. This doesn't happen all the time but, when it does, the work seems effortless, timeless and meditative. Those are moments of grace, undeserved and beyond understanding.

Richard Krogstad