A Galesburg-based artist found a silver lining during the social isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We were kind of stuck at home. We couldn’t travel, we couldn’t go anywhere, I got such cabin fever. I finally decided we should all go to the Indiana Dunes,” said Basia Krol.
“I had been there before, but for some reason, during that trip it was like I saw them for the first time in my life. It was just so gorgeous and beautiful, and I just started painting landscapes.”
She’s been painting landscapes ever since. The results can be seen in the exhibit “Wherever I May Roam,” on display through March 7 at the Western Illinois University Art Gallery.
Many of the exhibit’s oil paintings are of restored prairieland in the Galesburg area. Krol hopes the works take people to places they don’t realize they miss.
“We are so disconnected from the natural world, and it’s so beneficial for us and for our soul, and we don’t even realize it. We just kind of forget it. We get busy, and then we wonder why we are not happy,” she said.
Krol takes photographs when she is in the field, but she doesn’t rely on them when she’s creating a piece. Instead, she paints based on how she felt in the space.
“The feeling that I have when I’m in nature is quite spiritual,” she said.
Krol grew up in Warsaw, Poland.
She applied for residency programs in 2002 after attending college, and landed a Studios Midwest Artist Residency through the Galesburg Community Arts Center.
She returned to Poland for a while afterward, then moved to Chicago with her husband, who she met in Galesburg.
They eventually returned to Galesburg. She enjoys the region’s prairie land, though she also misses the forests and meadows of Poland.
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