Birger Sandzen was a Swedish painter who emigrated to the United States and taught art at Bethany College in tiny Lindsborg, Kansas for 52 years. He spent his summers in mountainous places like Estes Park and Manitou Springs, Colorado and many of his famous paintings depict scenery in places I have been.

There is a memorial gallery featuring his work in Lindsborg, and I stopped there last week on my way to Oklahoma.



Would you look at how perfect and green that grass is? I'm sure all the humidity had something to do with it.



I like his flower paintings quite a bit. (I wasn't sure if I could take pictures, so I was sneaking them.)



His main style of painting is to trowel on bright colors that seem to have no relationship to anything when you are standing up close.



And then when you step back, it becomes a picture.



The way he did water was to smear a single, smeary line of white-ish colors horizontal, and to achieve depth and perspective, he drew more of it several inches above the first line, and standing back, it worked. Up close, it looked like a mistake.

Looking at Sandzen's work in person, I felt like the guy must have been nuts - slapping on that thick paint in pinks and blues and purples and then running across the room to get the effect. I asked the woman at the desk what his personality was like, and she he was very restrained and dignified. I suppose by the time he had developed his style, he didn't have to run across the room for the colors to blend, he just knew instinctively.