Karen Kinder’s paintings: ‘This is the landscape that matters’

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — South Dakota’s natural beauty has inspired the art now on display in a Sioux Falls show from Brookings painter Karen Kinder.

“I grew up in the eastern part, Day County,” Kinder said. “Rolling hills, farm, grew up on the family farm, and this was, these were the scenes I saw. There was always the horizon to look at. The farm fields, the patterns, all of that, and it’s like internalized in me. This is the landscape that matters.”

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Collectively, Kinder’s pieces currently on display at Rehfelds Modern are called “South Dakota East to West.”

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“I think I paint because I have to,” Kinder said. “It’s like, in one sense, God gave me a gift, and I want to use it. Beyond that, I get cranky if I don’t paint. I just need to paint, and painting is the thing I like to do best of all.”

“Karen just kind of embodies how I feel about our state, but I’m not great at painting so she takes care of it for me,” Rehfelds Modern gallery director Alix Kyrie said.

Painting has clicked for Kinder while other pastimes haven’t quite done the same.

“I’ve tried other things,” Kinder said. “I kind of enjoy pottery, but I’m not good at it. I tried weaving, and I’m not really good at it. I didn’t really like it, but I decided I needed to focus on one thing, and I would get more done.”

Kinder’s show at Rehfelds Modern at the corner of 5th Street and Phillips Avenue in downtown Sioux Falls will last through the end of the month. There is no cost to peruse her show.

“You’ve met her,” Kyrie said. “She’s a gem, to begin with. She’s a lot of fun. She is absolutely incredible with communication, explaining her work, her reasoning, the colors that she uses, her approach.”

“I remember when I was an eighth-grader, I bought myself a set of oil paints, and then I set up still lifes in my room or I looked out the window and saw what I could see or I painted the family dog,” Kinder said. “That’s when I started.”

Kinder, who taught art for more than three decades in Sioux Falls and Brookings, appreciates distance and space.

“I like places that have enough of a horizon you can see the sunset,” Kinder said.

And, as her art reminds locals who view it, South Dakota offers people plenty of opportunities to enjoy a sunset.

“I don’t get to travel terribly often, so I’m also using Karen as an opportunity to see the state through her eyes and do a little bit of traveling, so to speak,” Kyrie said.

One piece of a trail near Mount Rushmore brought back memories for Kyrie.

“Going to church camp in the Black Hills, I’ve walked up that trail. It was terrible. But now when I look at Karen’s work, I have a little bit more of a warm, fuzzy feeling, yeah,” Kyrie said with a laugh, referencing a piece by Kinder featuring that trail. “Or seeing the mountain goats, the excitement of that when you’re traveling west river.”

And that’s kind of the point for Kinder with these paintings of South Dakota’s landscapes.

“I am hoping that they will feel the love for South Dakota that I do for the landscape,” Kinder said.

“Being a native South Dakotan, too, this just feels warm and welcoming, and it feels like home,” Kyrie said.