Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Ronnevik.
Sara, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
One of my earliest childhood memories involves paint. My mom let my sister and me dip our feet in pans of different colors of paint and walk on a long roll of paper. I enjoyed painting and drawing as a child and always loved bright, vibrant colors. When I was in college I took a lot of art classes but dragged my feet on actually declaring my major as Art because many art careers such as teaching or graphic design did not really appeal to me. Nonetheless, I eventually graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2004 with a degree in Studio Art.
I currently live near Fergus Falls, Minnesota. My husband farms and we are busy raising four school-aged kids. Over the years I have taught art classes in public schools, the Kaddatz gallery, and private lessons in my home. I have been actively creating art in my home studio for many years. I have done commissioned work for private individuals, businesses, and non-profits. I have found that the flexibility of being a freelance artist with a studio in my home has been the perfect fit for me while going through the busy years of parenting.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of my biggest challenges as an artist is that I have never really enjoyed many of the things that studio artists do in order to make art a career or vocation. I don’t like selling work at art fairs, I don’t like applying for grants or driving my artwork around to display at different galleries or businesses. I tried all of those things and found that they just made me tired and less creative. I finally made peace with the fact that it is okay for me to just create art and share it with my local community.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
In 2011 I was on vacation in Red Wing Minnesota with my family and I saw a painting at an art gallery that was called “The Farmer’s Market” by a local artist who signs her name “Sarka”. I absolutely loved it (and bought it!). What I loved most about it was how specific it was to the small town of Red Wing. It wasn’t a generic painting that could be any farmer’s market in any town. That painting was a turning point in the direction of my artwork.
I went home to my own small Minnesota town, determined to capture it in the same way that delighted me so much in the Red Wing painting. I mainly work in three different mediums, and most of my oil and acrylic paintings are of landmarks or buildings in Fergus Falls, or other nearby towns. These paintings have brought a lot of joy to people in my community as they see ordinary, everyday places in my abstract, geometric, and colorful style.
Another medium that I work in is watercolor. I have tended to use watercolor to capture rural landscapes and farms in West Otter Tail County. These landscapes are also very specific to my neighborhood and although they may look like scenes that could be anywhere in the county, my neighbors can often identify the exact spot that I am painting. I am very interested in local history and have collected histories and family genealogies from a lot of my neighbors.
In addition to that, I am also interested in the Native American history and geologic history of the area. As a result, most of my landscape paintings have a story to go along with them. In my imagination, I am always seeing something else besides the land. In one landscape I might be seeing a Swedish pioneer family who lived in a dugout which left a depression still visible today.
In another, I am seeing the long lines of Native Americans carrying canoes and camping gear as they were observed and remembered by a young pioneer girl. Or, I might be imagining the small glacial flood that carved out certain distinctive landforms. People do not always know these stories when they see one of my paintings. But I think that these unseen, living stories give life and movement to my landscape paintings.
The third medium that I use is linoleum block printing with oil-based ink, painted over with watercolor. I use this medium for my illustration work. I have illustrated two Bible storybooks that were printed and distributed in a central African language. These illustration projects were commissioned by missionaries working with a people group that had not had their language put into writing before. It was a priority to create high-quality color illustrations that reflected the culture of the people in this community.
This was one of the most rewarding art projects that I have done, as the work combined a lot of areas of interest to me; missions, linguistics, art, indigenous cultures, and history. I really enjoyed the research element of these projects. One of the stories was the Biblical story of Joseph. Collecting images and ideas from ancient Egyptian art and combining them with elements of Central African art was both challenging and incredibly fun for me.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
For creative people, there is often a feeling that we need to prove ourselves as legitimate in some way. If you are a musician, your dream is to go to Nashville and become famous. For actors, it’s to go to Hollywood and get famous. For artists, it’s to go to New York and become famous. Maybe? I’m not sure where artists go to get famous today. But the thing is, famous people are not always happy people.
Gardeners, now those are people who have things figured out. If you can find someone who has dug in the dirt in his or her backyard and planted seeds and watched them grow, that’s usually a person with true joy. I have tried to take my lesson from the gardeners of the world and make my own community and my own neighborhood to be the small garden where I plant and grow my creativity.
Contact Info:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Sara-Ronnevik-Artist/100043104642170/ and https://www.facebook.com/SaraRonnevikIllustrator
- Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SaraRonnevikArt
Image Credits
Sara Tysver
