Meet the Artist - Stan Herd

Stan Herd is a Kansas-based artist cultivating works both inspired by and created with the natural environment. During his forty-years as an artist, he has wandered from drawing to painting to earthwork pieces, allowing one medium to influence the next. In his youth, Herd was primarily inspired by Impressionist and Abstract painters. Over time, his view of the Kansas landscape and the natural world returned to influence each piece. After seeing several prints of Costa Rican artist Francisco Amighetti, Herd’s art forever changed. Herd met with Amighetti and imagined his portrait of Carole Cadue on the journey home. Since then, Stan Herd’s pieces have become a practice of process. 

Photo - Marc Havener, Resonate Pictures.

They begin in a stage of PREPARATION. Herd places himself into immersive environments and allows the aesthetics of a place to inform preparatory drawings and paintings. From there his work becomes a journey of CULTIVATION. Herd builds and nurtures earthwork pieces in natural spaces across the globe. Mainly portraits, Stan Herd is deeply moved by the strength of indigenous women in their ancestral homes as well as important historical figures. Through a process of months and years, Herd constructs his crop paintings with local plants, crops, and sediment. In his RUMINATION phase, Stan Herd creates paintings and prints involving his previous earthworks. Through rich color, Herd reinterprets each earthwork and the environment it inhabits as he imagines the pieces to come. 

Come with us on a month long journey, as we explore artistic process through the work of Stan Herd. Opening this Friday, March 31st, numerous of Herd’s pieces will hang in the Gallery throughout the month of April.

Sarah Jane "SJ" Dahms