By Bev Jackson Cotter

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center, 226 W. Clark St. in Albert Lea.

Rose Frantzen of Maquoketa, Iowa, has the amazing ability to capture one’s personality in a two-dimensional oil painting. She will be the featured artist at The Albert Lea Art Center’s annual fundraiser Friday at Wedgewood Cove. We are excited to host this unique artist, to showcase her warm and inviting art and to watch her demonstrate portrait painting.

Her portraits and landscapes define Iowa, its diverse personalities and its beautiful rural landscapes. I’m reminded of the way that Grant Wood’s stylized paintings comfort us today just as they did for people almost a hundred years ago. Frantzen’s portraits are real people and the landscapes are welcoming.

Her biography is impressive. Her work has been shown at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and the Denver Historical Museum, and she has been a frequent faculty member at the Portrait Society of America’s annual conference.

She and her husband, artist and illustrator, Charles Morris, purchased Maquoketa’s former city hall and have converted the 1901 building into a gallery and studio space. You can find them and more of their story at www.oldcityhallgallery.com. 

The Albert Lea Art Center members are thrilled to host this talented artist and to introduce her to the community.

As I read about Rose’s art and the success she has found by painting what she knows, I am reminded of a quote by Robert Bly when he was teaching a writing class of young students. They wanted their poetry to define romantic, palm tree-covered islands, sandy beaches and moonlight over the ocean. Bly’s response to them was, “Write about what you know and understand, what is real to you. There are no ocean beaches in southern Minnesota.”

An artist familiar to us all, Grant Wood, was born in 1891 in Animosa, Iowa. In his 20s, he traveled to Paris to study Impressionism, the current popular art style at the time. His nationwide success came after he returned home and began painting what he knew, working in the style of the Regionalists who understood their subjects because they lived their art. In 1930, his painting “American Gothic” was an instant success at an Art Institute of Chicago showing and was immediately purchased by the museum. 

What was “American Gothic?” It’s probably the most recognized picture in America and is known throughout the world.  The farmer in bib overalls with his three-tined pitchfork, his aproned, serious wife, the gothic window in their farmhouse all are easily recognizable, and while many people won’t recall the artist or the name of the painting, they will know them as they have appeared in many, many different ads, cartoons, posters and pictures — in different forms but easily recognizable.                    

Both Rose Frantzen and Grant Wood came from southeast Iowa, not far from the area that is now called the Grant Wood Scenic Byway, a part of the Eastern Iowa Arts Corridor. Rose’s hometown, Maquoketa is home to 38 historical sites (one of which is the Old City Hall Gallery), and also hosts the Maquoketa Art Experience, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to educating adults and children in the community and surrounding areas.

How interesting it is that we can travel the world and experience a multitude of new ideas, or even stay here and get lost in a puzzling piece of abstract art, yet when we enjoy regionalist art, it’s like returning to the comfort of our own home.