LandSkyWater | Barbara McIlrath

Barbara McIlrath travels along the Mississippi River between her farm studio in Pepin, Wisconsin and her house in St. Paul, Minnesota. The seasonal color changes of the Driftless Region inspire her paintings and drawings.

McIlrath is particularly drawn to the shoreline of Lake Pepin in the historic Village of Old Frontenac, Minnesota, as well as the prairie surrounding her farm in Hicks Valley, near the Village of Pepin.

Her paintings range from textured impasto paint mixed with cold wax to delicately layered oils and gouache. She describes her work as “including both carefully observed images of land, sky and water to more abstract compositions, discovered in the process of simplifying, improvising and questioning what I am seeing.”