County Road G, Egg Harbor
Tom Maakestad
Tom Maakestad works with oil paint, oil pastel and dry pastel using regional landscapes as his main focal point. In the early morning or late afternoon, he looks for vast expanses or the complexities formed by merging land masses with light and shadow. Maakestad's color pallet is frequently limited to what I’m viewing at that time of year.
Midwestern subject matter makes up the bulk of Tom's work. The area around his parent’s farm in south central Minnesota has elements that he appreciates about this part of the country: long views from open ridge lines remind him of bus rides from his youth when valley bottoms were shrouded in fog, or sunsets that heighten the landforms and tree rows. All of these factors combine to create intriguing material from which Maakestad uses to start pictures.
Dimensions: 15" x 48"
About the Artist

Tom Maakestad
Tom Maakestad works and lives in Marine on St. Croix, MN, where he has maintained a studio for the past 16 years. The Minneapolis area has been his home base since 1992. Prior to that, Tom and his wife, Anna, lived in Hong Kong for seven years, where they both had busy careers and traveled extensively throughout Asia. Trekking in Nepal, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, among other countries, gave them a firsthand observation of different cultures and art forms.
As a painter, Maakestad’s primary subject matter continues to be inspired by the broad valleys and agricultural regions near his family farm in Northfield, Minnesota. His landscape paintings have been included in collections at the Mayo Clinic and many others across the U.S. and overseas. The U.S. State Department purchased four of his southern Minnesota oil pastels for the ambassador's residence in Oslo, Norway.
Additionally, in the fall of 2016, he was invited to exhibit four paintings at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. The exhibition, organized by the U.S. ambassador, brought together many luminaries of the Norwegian gallery and museum world.
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