This Week En Plein Air - Posted on June 12, 2016 at 7:15 PM

Posted on June 12, 2016 at 7:15 PM

     Found a nice piece of earth to soak in the sun and drain out by the flies this past thursday.  It's in a geographical area I'll be referring to as Slumbering Souls Meadow, although the name exists only in my context.  Its an area of land that resembles the area I grew up in from about 8 to 12 years old.  Doesn't sound very long now, typing it in, but those four years really impacted my sense of aesthetics almost as much as the rest of my life has.  Four years versus 42 on the balancing scale of the mind I suppose.  Since then, I've fallen in love with various geographies found around the world but on stumbling into this small area, only about 200-400 acres, it immediately satisfied me.  I rode around on the bike(motorcycle) for about 3 hours a day over the week, just logging different areas I'd like to paint. 
     It's like walking down the sidewalk and finding a duffle bag stuffed with cash.  A true treasure.  After doing some poking around about it I found out it's part of a community of people who commonly have agreed not to develop the land they buy as property.  Rather, leaving it as trust to the generations of landowners to follow.  They started in the '50's I'm told.  The landscape itself is hardly seen in my home state of Minnesota anymore.  So much agricultural focus and metro development has sucked up most of the virgin prairie.  Leaving views of corn rows(the field, not the hair braid) or sterile views of new buildings or pop-up housing.  This picture is a bit on the kitsch side.  I may have been overly influenced.  None the less, I'm happy the way it turned out and I'll be mining this place for more pictures for some time to come.  It's a nice break from the boreal landscapes I also love and have been feeding on for the last two or three years. ~RJB