P. O. Box 117 Plato Center, IL 60170.
Lavern Kammerude, of Blanchardville, Wisconsin, started painting
when he retired from the dairy farm at the age of fifty-five. He is
now seventy-three years old with over 200 original paintings to his
credit. He paints what he knows and remembers. Farm scenes of days
gone by spring to life on canvas through masterful strokes from his
Kammerude was the winner of the 1986 Wisconsin State Heritage
Award for outstanding ‘rural art’ work, and the Wisconsin
Art Board has called him ‘an outstanding talented man
exceptional.’
The remarkable thing about this retired dairyman-turned-artist
is that he has had no formal art training and creates his oil
paintings almost entirely from memory. Asked about how he acquired
his artistic talent, Kammerude replies, ‘I guess I’ve
always had it, and I nurtured it along a little with a course by
mail from an artist’s school.’
Kammerude’s paintings vividly conjure up nostalgic scenes
from his boyhood days growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. He
recalls helping his dad hitch up the team of horses on a cold
winter day to haul milk to the cheese factory. He has fond memories
of neighbors getting together for ‘threshing bees’ and of
haying and shredding with the machinery of that day. In fact, the
memory of these occasions is so indelibly imprinted on
Kammerude’s mind that he is able, through total recall of the
situation coupled with his artistic talent, to recreate the scene
right down to the most minute detail.
Kammerude resides with his wife, Mildred, on a small acreage
near Blanchardville, a sleepy little community tucked away in the
hills of southwest Wisconsin. When he doesn’t have a paintbrush
in hand, Kammerude likes ‘fishing and going to ballgames,’
but bringing to life on canvas memories of his rural Wisconsin
childhood is what he likes to do best.
The Kammerude paintings shown on this page are among a number of
works for which signed, numbered prints are available.
