GO Paint! Chippewa Valley 2022
THE ART OF GO PAINT! FALL 2022
5-Day Plein Air Paint Festival
Virtual exhibition on view September 30, 2022
In Person in the Laurie Bieze Gallery from September 30 - November 27, 2022
Celebrate the flora, fauna, and folks of the Chippewa Valley depicted by this Fall’s GO Paint! artists. This Plein air art exhibit displays paintings within a 10-mile radius of the Eau Claire & Chippewa Rivers between Augusta, Chippewa Falls, Eau Claire, Durand, and Nelson, Wisconsin.
Artist Statements and Bios
Click the image to the right to enter the gallery.
Award Announcement and Commentary by James Boyd Brent
AWARD WINNERS
- Best of Show: Martha Hayden - “Confluence from Phoenix Park”
- First Place: Joe Maurer - “Rod & Gun”
- Second Place: Robert Barfknecht - “Big Falls Morning 22”
- Third Place: Jan Balow - “Anticipation”
- Best River: Tim Syring - “River Prairie Park Reflection”
- Best of Pablo Center Staff Pick: Martha Hayden - "Chippewa River, Lake Street Bridge with Pablo Center"
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
(In no particular order)
GO Paint! Chippewa Valley painters race to paint the flora, fauna, and folks of nearby Phoenix Park and the surrounding confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa Rivers in only 2 hours.
Adult Quick Paint Award Winners
- Best of Show - Joe Maurer
- First Place - Martha Hayden
- Second Place - Robert Barfknecht
- Third Place - Kathleen D'Angelo
Kids Quick Paint Award Winners: Grades 1 - 5
- First Place - Kylie, 9 years old
- Second Place - Graham, 8 years old
Kids Quick Paint Award Winners: Grades 6 - 8
- First Place - Micah, 12 years old
- Second Place - Claire, 11 years old
Kids Quick Paint Award Winners: Grades 9 - 12
- First Place - Shanna, 16 years old
Plein air painting is all about being present in nature and allowing oneself to be effected by it. Feelings, thoughts, and ideas are stimulated, and then there’s the challenge for the artist to find the visual language they need in order to create some sort of visual approximation of these feelings. So I think I’m drawn to paintings that in a sense contain the traces of ideas— a bit like a map of a particular time and place.
It is really terrific to see all the work produced in Go Paint! this year and to be treated to the individual sensibilities that are present in the work of all the artists.
- James Boy Brent

Confluence From Phoenix Park
Acrylic, 16 x 20 | $475
Juror’s Notes:
Wonderful intuitive response to the landscape. There’s so much to look at in this painting. It is full of surprises too.
Artist’s Statement:
My painting is both realistic and abstract, on the elusive edge between there and not there. On first look, everything is in place, then all dissolves. I want realism and abstraction to take turns. I want a painting to be evocative of time and place, and overwhelming in abstract, structural logic. I look for a surprise, a drama,a different way of seeing. I try not to see anything for itself alone, but as part of a whole. In this context, my subjects take on meanings other than the accustomed ones. They are more than still life and landscape. They are comments on thinking and seeing.

Rod & Gun
Oil, 12 x 12 | $300
Juror’s Notes:
Really fantastic sense of shape and composition. Also a wonderful gestural energy and sure footedness.
Artist’s Statement:
Joe has a BFA in Art from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1999) and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (2004). Joseph draws from a deep commitment to ecology and love of place. His work as a team member with Hargreaves Associates Landscape Architects included design on the London Olympic Park and landscape design projects in NYC; then as a Graduate School teacher for 4 years in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania he refined skills that he brought home to his Mid-Western roots. In 2006 he collaborated with New York-based Public Artist Mary Miss on a large-scale public art and landscape project at Arlington Sewage Treatment Plant in Arlington Virginia.
In his home of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he works as project design coordinator for Next Step Energy, a renewable energy company, Joseph spends regular time as a member of a community garden and prairie enthusiast. It is here that his work has recently taken bloom. In 2013, he designed a pavilion that stands in the Eau Claire’s Forest St. Community Garden. In Fall Creek, Joe designed a new Butterfly Pavilion for Beaver Creek Reserve which will open in the spring of 2019. He has also directed, produced, and shot a documentary on native remnant prairies for The Prairie Enthusiasts. Joe was Artist in Residence at Christ Church Cathedral in Eau Claire from 2018-2019. Joe is an award-winning painter and has exhibited widely in the Midwest.

Big Falls Morning 22
Watercolor, 22 x 28 | $750
Juror’s Notes:
Really nice bold gestural movement and interplay between the elements of air, water, and rock.
Artist’s Statement:
Robert Barfknecht has been painting watercolors for some fifty years. He began to paint while living in Tuscany and has continued to sketch and paint all over the world while working as an engineer and manager. These days he summers on Lake Altoona in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and winters on Hypoluxo Island in Latana, Florida, painting outdoors (en plein air) whenever he can.
His work has enjoyed recognition and awards, including first prize at the first annual Eau Claire Plein Air Contest at Beaver Creek in 2015. His work is displayed at private and public spaces in Italy and around the U.S., including libraries and schools in Florida and Wisconsin.
Bob participates in many exhibitions and has enjoyed several solo shows in Florida, as well as one at the L.E. Phillips Public Library in the Autumn of 2020.

Anticipation
Acrylic, 12 x 16 | $500
Juror’s Notes:
I think the imaginative qualities particularly in Anticipation are very interesting-also this painting has an engaging congestion.
Artist’s Statement:
I'm a senior artist, that found my passion after retirement. I love painting Wisconsin's nature where I enjoy trying out new techniques, often I paint at Eau Claire Senior Center. My medium is pencil ink, watercolor, acrylics, and oils. During Wisconsin cold winters I find warmth down in Florida, where I am able to keep my passion alive.

River Prairie Park Reflection
Water, Carbon, and Ink | $200
Juror’s Notes:
Very engaging sense of volume and luminosity in these watercolors. The water feels wet.

Chippewa River, Lake Street Bridge with Pablo Center
16 x 20 | $475
Artist’s Statement:
My painting is both realistic and abstract, on the elusive edge between there and not there. On first look, everything is in place, then all dissolves. I want realism and abstraction to take turns. I want a painting to be evocative of time and place, and overwhelming in abstract, structural logic. I look for a surprise, a drama,a different way of seeing. I try not to see anything for itself alone, but as part of a whole. In this context, my subjects take on meanings other than the accustomed ones. They are more than still life and landscape. They are comments on thinking and seeing.

James Boyd Brent grew up in the United Kingdom. He studied printmaking at Ruskin University Cambridge and Central St. Martins, London. After finishing school in the U.K., he moved to Minnesota as a Fulbright Scholar in the early 1990s and receiving his MFA in printmaking at the University of Minnesota. Brent currently lives and works in Minneapolis/St Paul and is a Professor for the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. His creative and academic interests include the relationship between creativity and place, and all aspects of painting, drawing, printing, and studio culture. Brent’s studio practice centers on printmaking and painting, and his work has been exhibited and collected internationally.
Artist Statement: I started my art practice in the UK but since moving to the US my work in print, drawing, and painting has been strongly influenced by living in the mid-west and by the histories, stories, cultures, and landscapes here. I teach drawing and surface design (this consists of screen printing, letter press, dyeing, relief printing), creativity, and a graduate course on representation. All the course work I teach is in the context of design studies, and my teaching itself has always been driven by a continuous deep engagement with my own on-going art practice. I’ve also maintained connections with the UK and exhibit my works at the Bankside Gallery in London.

Jean Accola has been a painter most of her life. In 1980 she moved to rural Western Wisconsin where she lived a creative life with her musician husband and two children.
In 1985 she opened the Accola Gallery in Durand WI, where she continues to work and exhibit. She has studied with many influential artists which helped her establish her skills in watercolor, oil, and acrylic. Jean Accola founded the Fresh Art Tour in 1998 and the GO Paint! Plein Air painting event in 2013 and is now looking forward to years of “just painting”.
All artwork pricing is set by the artists and is non-negotiable and non-refundable. All artwork sales are by commission with Pablo Center at the Confluence. Your purchase supports our endeavors to present quality visual art programming that is free and open to the public.
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