Katie Steinhagen

“Sharing what god has richly blessed us with”, is the inspiration behind Katie Steinhagen’s paintings that are displayed at the Chaska Community Center Gallery, entitled ‘God Inspired Art’. Growing up in a dairy farm east of Cologne and now living in the Waconia area, the viewer can easily see her love, passion, and enjoyment of nature that she express thorough her paintings.
Kate’s works were displayed on November 3rd and they will be up until December 12th. Although I don’t know how her works were opened, the day I went to the gallery to write this paper, I was the only one at the gallery. The paintings are displayed fairly well. The lighting is good, but some of paintings need adjustment on the way they are hung, and also a little description for each painting would have been more helpful in understanding more about the inspiration behind it.
As I stated above, her paintings are inspired by the nature around her, and living in Minnesota, it’s not a surprise that some of her paintings would include scenes of winter. Also because she grew up on a farm, she has many paintings of farm fields, barns and farm animals. In addition, Katie is a very religious person, so she has paintings of

her church as well. From her works, the two pieces that caught my attention the most were; ‘Winter Scene’ and ‘Autumn Sunset’.

‘Winter Scene’ is just like its name.

It captures a calm scene during the winter. Looking at the painting, some of the things that jump right out are the paved side walk/ bike path, the evergreen trees, and the ground covered by clear fresh snow. The side walk starts on the right side of the painting, curves to the left and comes back to the right and fades into the evergreen tree, which is right in the middle, the emphasis of the painting. The other evergreen trees are painted behind the middle tree. They are evenly spaced and each tree is painted in different perspectives, which adds depth to the view of the nature/scene being captured. Since there is fresh snow on the ground and the time seems to be set in the morning or midafternoon, the whole painting has a snow white

brightness.
The second piece ‘Autumn Sun Set’ is in many ways a contrast to ‘Winter Scene’, the biggest difference being the value. ‘Autumn Sunset’ is painted with calm colors, giving it a dark calm value. It’s is easy to see the brush strokes because of the little color details captured, like the farm animals in distance and the different shades of the color on the clouds while the sun sets.
In general, Katie’s works met my expectations of what her paintings would be about. I loved her works overall because it was nice to see the captured moments of nature around us that we rarely ever stop and take a moment to appreciate.