Margit Mindrum, Haying.
Gouache, 16” x 28”, 1971.
Courtesy Stanley and Janet Oian, Dent, MN.

Margit Mindrum (1899–1975) had very little training in art. Some counsel from her brother Halvor Landsverk, an accomplished wood-carver who had learned the fundamentals of drawing through a correspondence course, was the extent of it. A Houston County farmer’s wife and a mother, Mindrum did not begin to paint until after the age of 50. Her medium was Carter’s watercolors, an opaque gouache-type paint that she bought in small jars at the dime store, and her subject matter was almost exclusively her environment in rural southeast Minnesota.

Mindrum’s art, like nature itself, changed with the seasons, about which she wrote, “All have their own pleasure.” Behind them, she believed, was a God who gave special meaning to each. Haying captures the essence of south-eastern Minnesota summers with convincing perspective and shading arrived at more through observation than the application of academic rules.

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Source: “Painting by Minnesotans of Norwegian Background, 1870–1970” — This exhibition was sponsored by the Minnesota Historical Society, guest-curated by Marion Nelson, and hosted at the James J. Hill House, St. Paul. The exhibit ran from April 1 through October 14, 2000.