Corey Drieth "Reveal #2"

Growing up on the Front Range of Northern Colorado, I found myself drawn to the prairie far more often than to the mountains...its wide-open spaces and sweeping sky acting as a kind of beacon of possibility for me. I am not sure why. But perhaps it's due to the fact that both sides of my family come from the Great Planes. My mother is from the tiny rural town of Cedarvale, Kansas on its eastern edge, while my father is from its western boundary; he was born just east of Berthoud, in a small house built within the Little Thompson River watershed. His love of the prairie had a particularly strong impact on me. During my childhood we spent time together there, hunting, fishing, and riding motorcycles along lonely back roads between farmhouses and grain elevators. Whenever we did, he told me stories about our family history. Both sets of his grandparents were German-Russian immigrants from the Volga River steppes. And his father and mother - my grandparents - were tenant farmers who worked plots from Greeley to Loveland. They worked hard, raising sugar beets, alfalfa, winter wheat, and other staple crops, and I think his deep connection to the land helped to ground me, helped me to see it as home too.

In addition to my personal history, what I love the most about the prairie is how its epic, paired-down topography offers a generous space within which to contemplate the most fleeting, intimate, and humble things: The song of a meadowlark, the smell of manure on a freshly fertilized field, pink clouds at sunrise, picnicking under rustling cottonwoods, snow settling in a shallow ravine. My paintings are a direct response to these moments, and they attempt to embody some of the qualities that can still be found in such places.