Tom Maakestad
Tom Maakestad works and lives in Marine on St. Croix, MN where he has maintained a studio for the past 26 years. The Minneapolis area has been home-base since 1992. Prior to that Tom and his wife Anna lived in Hong Kong for 7 years where they both had busy careers and traveled extensively throughout Asia. Trekking in Nepal, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan among other countries gave them a first hand observation of different cultures and art forms.
His undergraduate work in literature and studio art propelled him into a parallel track as a graphic designer for the publishing industry as well as a full time artist. Maakestad’s exhibitions in the US and Asia have placed his work in many collections world-wide.
He recently judged the Minnesota State Fair Painting section of the fine arts exhibition and has received 4 grants through the Minnesota State Arts Board.
His main representation is through the Groveland Gallery where he will show his most recent MNSAB grant project next December, 2022.
Contact the Groveland Gallery for purchasing questions: 612-377-7800, by email: info@gallery.com or online at www.grovelandgallery.com.
Artist’s statement:
I work with oil paint, oil pastel and dry pastel using regional landscapes as my main focal point. In the early morning or late afternoon I look for vast expanses or the complexities formed by merging land masses with light and shadow. My color pallet is frequently limited to what I’m viewing at that time of year.
Oil pastel has been a versatile medium both for study and finished works. For the past 31 years I have used both dry and oil pastel to resolve compositions combining both drawing and painting techniques. The resulting larger oil paintings are much easier to manage from these studies.
My work attempts a realist fiction. Elements such as surface treatment, created light and color theory combine to suggest places that appeal to me. However close to the actual place or time of day the work does not attempt to create a copy of an event or place but to hopefully survive on its own as a cohesive composition.
Midwestern subject matter makes up the bulk of my work. The area around my parent’s farm in south central Minnesota has elements that I appreciate about this part of the country: long views from open ridge lines remind me of bus rides from my youth when valley bottoms were shrouded in fog, or sunsets that heighten the landforms and tree rows. All of these factors combine to create intriguing material from which to start my pictures.