American Picturesque — View of the Driftless Area From Blue Mound

Like walking into a renaissance painting, the Driftless Area unfolds from southern Wisconsin’s highest point. This is the part of Wisconsin the glaciers missed 10,000 years ago, so it lacks glacial drifts—deposits of rock, gravel, and silt—and maintains its hills and valleys, unlike the plains surrounding it. Through conservation, we see the beauty of an early American wilderness, albeit sans the large mammals that inhabited it before European colonization.

2024, acrylic on canvas, 16” wide x 20” high