Painting a Sense of Place

Painting a Sense of Place

Last night’s rain sits on the tips of the grass, filling the air with a fresh, dewy scent. Birds tweet beneath feathery clouds, while bison roam nearby but out of sight. Uintas – small brown squirrels native to the western United States – scamper across the field, disappearing into the surrounding aspens and sage grass. The Teton Range, snow-covered and sharp, rises at our backs.

Kathryn Mapes Turner ’95 is so fixated on the square of landscape in front of her that she doesn’t seem to notice any of it. Turner is concentrating on her “topic sentence” – what she wants to say with today’s painting. She wears a brown apron dotted with blue and yellow paint over a puffy jacket, keeping the early-morning May chill from shortening her time en plein air.

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October 2, 2018

Art and HistoryAlumniArtNotre Dame Magazine