Prairie paintings on display at Arts Center

“Sculpted Landscapes,” an exhibit of paintings by artist Ken Dalgarno is on display at the Arts Center through April 25. Dalgarno is a self-taught Canadian artist from Moose Jaw, Saskatche-wan. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Saskat-chewan in 1986.

He has exhibited in group and solo shows across Western Canada, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. His paintings are in private and public collections across Canada, South Africa and Italy. Dalgarno has received support for his work both from the Canada Council of the Arts and the Sas-katchewan Arts Board. Sculpted Landscapes is currently touring Saskat-chewan via the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils and North Dakota through the North Dakota Art Gallery Association, with support from the North Dakota Council on the Arts.

“My ancestors were among the first pioneers to homestead and farm in the Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, district in the 1880s,” Dalgarno said. “Somehow, from a flat and seemingly characterless land a bond was formed and a heritage was created.”

He noted the bond and heritage with the land is slowly fading away as farming becomes less a family operation and more a corporate endeavor. Sculpted Landscapes honor and preserve this farming heritage and recaptures that rugged hands-on bond with the land, he said. The work focuses on and chronicles the now decaying and vanishing farm buildings and grain elevators that once dotted the flat Saskatchewan prairies.

“These monuments are like headstones standing barely only as a fading symbol of the toil and bond pioneers once had with the land but also as a strong symbol of our own fleeting and fragile place in the world,” he said. “I call these paintings landscapes within landscapes; a personal or spiritual landscape wrapped inside a physical landscape. The tactile texture of swirling furrows and ridges is meant to symbolize the hardship, the turmoil and the perseverance of our prairie farmers. There is nothing featureless about the prairies.”

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