As I sketch and paint I dream about my relationship with the natural world. My paintings are talismans for the health of the earth.
I love observing primordial elements like gently flowing rivers, pellucid lakes, the flora growing along riverbanks, dense tangled undergrowth, and forests with glimpsed clearings. These ancient elements are constantly in flux. They were alive long before and will be long after our brief lifetimes.
I've a special affinity for rivers though and their 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.
Solitude on the water is a very calming, spiritual experience for me. My spirit seems to thrive where nature has not been modified by human activity. These places lower my anxiety and seem to connect my mind and heart. They should be protected.
I like to sketch with colored pencils while I'm solo kayaking. Then I elaborate on those tiny sketches, creating much larger oil paintings in my studio. I hope my reverence for nature is conveyed in my paintings.
Humans are so obsessed with dominating nature instead of realizing that we are a part of it.
Honor and respect the land, water, plants and animals. Remember we are all part of the circle of life along with the rocks, trees, horses, eagles, fish, salamanders and spiders. They all have a unique purpose, and we do too.
“We are nature too.”
~Shakespeare.
“There are two eyes in the human head
the eye of mystery and the eye of harsh truth
the hidden and the open, the woods eye and the prairie eye.
The prairie eye looks for distance, clarity, and light,
the woods eye for closeness, complexity, and darkness.”
~Minnesota writer and poet Bill Holm
Biophilia: since we evolved in nature, our senses and body rhythms are best suited for that environment. There is an “innate emotional affiliation with other living organisms” that makes us calm and comfortable in nature. The sounds, smells, sights are our evolutionary “happy place” where we can rest and rejuvenate. We are deeply tied to a world from where we have strayed.
Attention restoration: Fascination with the beauty and mystery of the natural world draws us in. Nature is enticing but not demanding. Looking at nature lets the hard-working executive function parts of the brain recover.
Awe: The feeling we get from encountering something vast and wondrous, that challenges our comprehension.
Forest Bathing: Heart rate and blood pressure drop. Less concern for self, increased generosity, and more cooperation. There is less violence when trees are incorporated into low-income housing developments. It doesn’t have to be the forest; water, even urban parks, can be healing.
Kraig Thayer Rasmussen is an artist who creates atmospheric often large-scale landscapes. There is a quiet intimacy in his paintings that reveals his long and familiar relationship with the land. He attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design has been an arts activist, teacher, museum and gallery curator, exhibit designer, arts administrator, and gallery director. He has traveled the United States, Vancouver, Toronto, Iceland, Austria, Italy, Greece, the British Isles, France, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Yucatan peninsula, and Jamaica sketching and prowling around art museums.
Rasmussen realized his affinity for nature as a young boy in the fifties. He intentionally strengthened this relationship in the sixties and seventies. In 1973 he purchased 120 acres in Northern Minnesota and lived the simple life of a “back-to-the-lander". He believes humans should be stewards of the world around them. Land and water stir feelings of sanctuary for him. His paintings reflect these sentiments and draw you into his sense of place.
Currently he curates the Raymond Avenue Gallery’s exhibits.
"Kraig Rasmussen’s work draws the viewer into the frame, into the scene, into a sense of place. He lets us touch the Earth.”
~ Margaret Welshons, Healing Arts Coordinator
"Kraig's work invites an intimate interaction with natural places. It tugs you gently into a mysterious, yet somehow familiar and intriguing place. His paintings activate all your senses; one hears the water, feels the mist and smells the leaves, creating a place for peaceful contemplation.”
~Anna Carlson, artist and art collector
“There is such a particular light to Kraig’s work and an, oh, I don’t know, something that makes me feel Milton Avery and oddly Edward Hopper. Very evolved style. Wonderful.”
~Robynne Limoges, photographer extraordinaire
“I want to live inside your paintings.”
~Sara Nephew
“We are nature too.”
~Shakespeare.
“If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.”
~Alan Watts
“Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.”
~Albert Einstein
Love, hate, tears and laughter are what life is made of.
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
~ Dalai Lama
An old Chinese legend tells of the painter Wu Daozi (680-c760), who learned to paint so vividly that he was finally able to step inside his work and vanish into the landscape. Magical though it sounds, this legend iterates the common intuition that artworks are more like portals than ordinary objects: they can transport us into other worlds.
Painting is silent poetry.
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