Sixteen Hocking County barn paintings being sold at silent auction

LOGAN — The Hocking County Historical and Genealogical Society and Museum will hold a silent auction of barn paintings by artist Robert Kroeger at 2:30 p.m. April 16 at the museum, 64 N. Culver St., Logan. Residents, neighbors, and especially the barn owners, as well as interested individuals and museum supporters, are invited to the museum complex, where you can see the barns and bid on them. And if you are determined, take away your winning paintings.

Minimum bid is $200 (estimated value is $350 to $450 depending on the size of the paintings). Every painting is framed in barn wood, often from the area, and ready to hang.

To find barns for Kroeger to paint, the Society has driven around Hocking County in search of old barns that appear to be on their last leg, and have also learned about them through referrals by friends. Last year barn scouts Dave Crawford and Nyla Vollmer took Kroeger on a big drive through the county. With his camera, he captures pictures of these old barns. He loves to be able to check out the barn, and talk to the owners, if possible, to learn more about the age and history of the old barn.

All the available barn paintings are on the Society’s Facebook page.

Kroeger is a second-generation artist. His father was an artist. But first he served in the U.S. Navy, where he visited many great art museums, and was influenced by the 3-D effect of impasto, that inspired his technique of painting. Kroeger earned his living as a dentist, and in the early 2000s he first saw a deteriorating barn calling out to him to “PAINT ME!”

Kroeger paints mostly with palette knives on Masonite or linen panels, using oils, wet into wet. This method is not too common today, but with extremely rewarding results. This result causes the lights to bounce off the thick mounds and deep crevasses in is paintings. He has donated hundreds of these paintings to 4-H Groups, Historical Societies, and other nonprofits around Ohio and beyond the state lines. This is the Society’s fifth occasion to work with Kroeger’s paintings and it is always an enormous success for the nonprofit.