INTERSECTIONS | Wendell Arneson

Arneson was a professor of fine art at St. Olaf College for 37 years, until his retirement in 2015. He has exhibited his work throughout the region for over 40 years. His paintings are part of numerous collections including Ford Motor Company, Prudential Life Insurance, 3M Corporation, US Bank, General Motors Corporation, Princeton University and the Hillstrom Museum of Art.

Arneson’s work is exciting and intelligent, giving reference to landscape, deconstructed and reassembled into planes of warm and cool color. Working in both large and small scale, these expressionist paintings have a surface of fluid brushwork and movement. Of his work, Arneson writes:

“The work of this exhibit draws from an inventory of images that make multiple, varied references that allow for content to shuffle, reinvent, and remake itself. As an image maker, I seek the intersection between figuration and abstraction. Art, for me, does not provide answers but rather provokes questions and seeks possibilities.

This exhibition of abstract paintings and mixed media drawings honor mapping as a conceptual base as well as references to time, place, and memory. The images may reflect specific locations while also seeking, through abstraction, multiple layers of entrance and ambiguity for the viewer. The images in both the paintings and the mixed-media drawings are imaginatively less certain and provide a visual journey of transformation. What matters most is a painterly dialogue between image, structure, color, tactile surface, and space. The result evokes a journey of discovery and imagination.”

Artist Profile:
Wendell Arneson is a Wisconsin native, earning a BA in studio art from Luther College, Decorah, Iowa and an MFA from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Post-graduate studies include classes with Nathan Oliveira and Gregory Amenoff at the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts. Arneson was appointed to the faculty of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1978 where he holds the position as a Professor Emeritus of Art. He maintains an active exhibition schedule, with work represented by Groveland Gallery (Minneapolis, MN), Idea Gallery (Egg Harbor, WI) and Moberg Gallery (Des Moines, IA). His work is held by an extensive number of private, corporate,

Presented alongside: Views from the Car Window | Fred Anderson

Gallery Hours:
Tuesdays - Saturdays 12 to 5