“The natural landscape and its skies has been the dominant theme of my work for fifty years. My earliest landscapes were of the sand dunes of northern Indiana where I taught art at Emerson School in Gary.

When we moved to Urbana/Champaign my focus shifted from the Lake Michigan shore to the fertile fields of the central Illinois prairie. I still find the classical geometry dominated by the drama of its big skies beautiful and expressive.

In 1971 we purchased land in the Shawnee Hills of north Pope County, Illinois. Breensward (the name we gave our place) and the surrounding country has become an important source of subjects for my paintings.

It is a challenge for me as an artist to organize the formal compositional elements and to manipulate the paint in order to make a visual statement that communicates a sense of place and the poetry inherent in a particular landscape.”

—Harry Breen
About his work