Artist Statement

I make artwork to celebrate the beauty I see and feel in this world. I focus on the natural world of plants and landscapes, but also explore the beauty I find in people and community.

I make paintings by going into natural areas, exploring the gardens of my yard/neighborhood/city, and spending time with friends. I paint on site, take photographs, and make sketches. I then take this documentation back to my studio to finish what I began in the field or to create new paintings. I reinterpret the genre of botanical in a contemporary fashion. This is done either through a clean crisp rendering in watercolor or through combining natural subjects with a contemporary sense of color and/or line in my oil paintings.

My artwork consists of watercolors, oil paintings and drawings. Although I treat my botanical watercolors as complete artworks in themselves, I sometimes use them as sketches for oil paintings. I also enjoy creating blog entries in which I write, photograph, interview or videotape whatever helps me to better understand beauty and my art.

I am currently making final edits on a book about the relationship between nature and parenting. Fertile Ground: Parenting and Nature shares personal stories of parenting with the wholistic view that human development is an extension of our speciel development in Nature.

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Biography

Mr. Granlund was born on a chilly October night in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1963. Seven weeks later, his family move to South Bend, Indiana. Mr. Granlund spent the rest of his childhood growing up with his family on the northern border of New Jersey and in the western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

Mr. Granlund's childhood was uneventful except for the occaisional demonstration of artistic talent.

For his undergraduate studies, Mr. Granlund returned to the land of his birth and attended Bethel College, Saint Paul, MN. After graduating with a Bachelors of Arts Degree in 1985, Mr. Granlund knocked about: working on an apple orchard, living in a studio warehouse space, working for American Maintenance, living in six different places in eight months and eventually landing as a caretaker for an apartment building in south Minneapolis.

Mr. Granlund received his Masters of FIne Arts degree in painting and drawing from Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York in 1990. He then moved back to Minnesota to teach at his alma mater, Bethel College, for a year and a half.

One day in 1993, Mr. Granlund called the local zoo and conservatory and told them they should have an artist to teach courses and paint images of the park. They agreed with him and asked him to come teach classes. From 1994 to 2003 Mr. Granlund was the Arts Program Manager at the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory and established an education department. In this capacity, he coordinated art and gardening classes and programs for adults and children and managed public art projects at the zoo and conservatory.

In 2001, Mr. Granlund established the Botanical Arts and Illustration Certification program at the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory. This program provides botanical arts courses in which students could receive certification and college credit through Concordia University, Saint Paul, MN. Mr. Granlund continues to instruct in this program, teaching beginning drawing, beginning watercolor, and botanicals in pencil, oil and watercolor.

In 2005, Mr. Granlund became the Arts and Gardens Program Coordinator for the City of Saint Paul Department of Parks and Recreation. In this capacity, Mr. Granlund oversees the design, planting and maintenance of the public gardens of Saint Paul, MN. This includes 300 garden beds, 160 planters and 600 hanging baskets. He also oversees the maintenance of the public art collection. His job is to help beautify Saint Paul. In the summer of 2008, Mr. Granlund was responsibile for making, and keeping, downtown Saint Paul beautiful and welcoming for the Republican National Convention.

Mr. Granlund is currently painting, writing and studying to be a caretaker of an island on the U.S./Canadian border.

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