THE FACTS:   The Midwest, a region known as America's Heartland, which refers to its primary role in the nation's manufacturing and farming sectors as well as its patchwork of commercial cities and small towns

combined are considered the broadest representation of American culture. It's home of more than one quarter of U.S. Presidents. It's also the birthplace of the inventors and entrepreneurs of most of the technology that fuels the world's economy (airplane, automobile, electric lighting, the transistor, petroleum, and steel production). 

The Midwest is also home to abundant nature including the massive Great Lakes and the vast northwoods which cover northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and spill over into Canada. as stated by:


 http://wikitravel.org/en/Midwest_(United_States_of_America)


Its Patchwork:  The image below is one of my newest projects. It's the focus of an acrylic painting, that I've started, titled,  "The Working Man".

The Scene: a farm house;  I passed on my way home from the lake one Sunday afternoon in June. I wasn't looking for any images as I drove those familiar county roads winding my way back home, back to civilization.       Then whoosh....there it was!  I had passed it!  And I was down the road a couple of miles, by the time my creative brain's network of neurons processed the information. Of course!  I had to turn around, return, and capture a snap-shot of this common everyday scene. It was set-up...staged...played out, if you will, by these people of this "midwest landscape".    

I mean it's 2010, the world is full of technological advances and here in the midst is this snip-it... in real-time, a simple wash line setting on the side yard.  The colors couldn't have been more vibrant.  The shade of the large tree couldn't be more deliberate than if  it had been specifically laid-out there as part of a movie set.  But it's not a scene re-created it's "real-life"!  The display of blue-collar shirts, blue jeans, and coveralls.  Obviously, one of the many laborers that are The Midwest, "The Working Man".  He is a real person. He's a big part of the back-back of this country.  And now a painting, a tribute of his life. A Tribute of the symbolic relationship of the the landscape and its people. My shop description explains it all, A Midwest Artist Interpretatio of the Landscape and Its People.    Simply, A Piece Of Heaven.