New Moon, McPherson County, Kansas

A tiny crescent moon floats above the treetops in this glowing Kansas evening scene, painted by Birger Sandzén in 1929. Born in Sweden, Sandzén came to America in 1894 and settled in Kansas, where he taught at Bethany College for nearly sixty years. He grew deeply attached to the open country around him and gave places like McPherson County a beauty that most people passing through would never have noticed. This little patch of trees and sky became, under his brush, something worth stopping for.

The colors are what pull you in. Rather than painting the trees plain green and brown, Sandzén filled them with orange, blue, purple, and pink, while the sky above melts from soft rose into pale yellow. He built the whole picture from thick, chunky dabs of paint applied with real energy, a method that recalls Van Gogh and the Pointillists. Stand back a little and those separate touches knit together into a shimmering whole.

People sometimes called him the "American Van Gogh," even though he arrived at his bold style mostly through his own experimenting. Working far from the major art cities of his day, he still turned out thousands of paintings and built a loyal audience. This quiet twilight is a fine example of how he found something special in the plain corners of the place he called home.