David Strom

Exhibit

March 10 – April 28, 2022

SMAC Gallery

509 W Main Street, Marshall, MN 56258
(Mailing address: PO Box 55)

Regular office hours are:
Monday-Friday 9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm

If you would like to schedule a private viewing or coordinate a visit outside regular office hours, please contact us via email at: info@swmnarts.org

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Drawing to Painting: May I Have This Dance...

David Strom paints and draws in Windom, MN. He received his BFA in painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1973 and studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, in 1972 and Edinburgh Arts ’73, Edinburgh, Scotland. He married Marilee Webster in 1978. They co-owned First Floral Hallmark retiring in 2017. Strom works with acrylics and pen & ink on paper and canvas. The southwest Minnesota rural landscape has been his main interest.

In 2019 he did a series of black acrylic and ink drawings on 40” x 60” large format paper with 26” x 45” images. These drawings are a combination of realism and fantasy and refer to gray steel grain bins, elevators, wind turbines, round bales, roads, ropes, rows of crops in all stages of development and rest, and the abstract way that we define the land using maps, specifically plat maps. These elements are combined by putting them in vignettes and connecting them together much like one would make a quilt or illustrate a graphic novel.

2021-2022 Strom received a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council (SMAC) to interpret these drawings into 12-36” x 60” acrylic on canvas paintings.

The process has been very illuminating. Two obvious major differences are color and the ability to paint over and over and over again. The paintings use the drawings as a starting point and then take off from there. Strom thinks of it like music with sharps and flats, slow and fast, rest and rhythm etc. The end result will be 12 Dancing pairs of drawings and paintings reflecting and interpreting the landscape he lives in and what lives within him. Genius Loci

Strom has shown extensively in the region, including most recently at Arts on Grand, Spencer, IA (2021); Pearson Lakes Art Center, Okoboji, IA (2012 & 2017); Carnegie Art Center, Mankato, MN (2016); SMSU, Marshall, MN (2012 & 2014); The Phipps Center for the Arts, Hudson, WI (2014 & 2022); Witter Gallery, Storm Lake, IA (2013 & 2018); Remick Gallery, Windom, MN (2013 & 2022); Art Center of Saint Peter, Saint Peter, MN (2011); Riverland Community College, Austin, MN (2010). His work has been accepted numerous times in the juried Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition. Strom has received Individual Artist Career Grants from SMAC funded by the McKnight Foundation, Marshall, MN in 2004, 2011 & 2021.