The Kansas Masters Invitational Show is at the Strecker-Nelson Gallery at Manhattan, Kansas and the exhibit will open August 21, 2009. "Enduring the Storm" 16x20 depicts an approaching thunderstorm over the historic Lower Fox Creek School in the Tallgrass National Preserve. When I was painting "Enduring the Storm" my thoughts were not only of the physical storm above the school area but the fiscal storm that is overtaking education in Kansas today.
This exhibit will benefit the Kansas Park Trust, which, along with the Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service, maintains and operates the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Tallgrass prairie once covered 400,000 square miles of North America. Less than 4 % remains, mostly in the Flint Hills of Kansas. On November 12, 1996, legislation created the 10,894 acre preserve, which protects a nationally significant example of the once vast tallgrass prairie ecosystem and ensures that current and future generations can share in its beauty and culture.
