Editor's Note: This story is part of our series, Sacred Earth which examines the intersection between climate change — and faith, worldview, philosophy, psychology, and the creative arts. This series is sponsored by the Fetzer Institute.


GALESBURG, MI — To walk into Fence Rows Studio in the countryside of Galesburg, Michigan, is to walk into a living story. 

“Painting is my storytelling,” artist Conrad Kaufman says. “Each one of my paintings tells a story.”

Kaufman’s art stories in vibrant colors speak of earth and sky, trees and water, light and dark. The paintings are large; the more than 300 murals in and surrounding the greater Kalamazoo area are even larger. The roots from which these paintings and murals are born go deep. 

Kaufman is the son of Maynard and Sally Kaufman, growing up on the family’s certified organic 160-acre farm near Bangor, Michigan. Alongside the Kaufman family, students stayed on the farm, also known as the School of Homesteading, learning the methods of organic farming and self-sufficiency.  

“It was a real working farm where the weather and seasons guided the work we undertook,” writes Conrad Kaufman in his bio on the Fence Rows website. “A farm and livelihood that resulted in cold feet and fingers in winter, the wonderful flavor of maple syrup in spring, sweat and sore muscles from summer haying followed by a farm-fresh BLT, and autumn’s storing of firewood in the midst of Michigan’s kaleidoscope of colors.” 

Today, Kaufman lives on eight wooded acres with his wife, Rebecca Boase, and their dog, Micah. His garage has been converted into a studio, one section for painting, the larger section for furniture building. The area where he paints is lined with several thousand music CDs that the artist plays while painting.

Fran DwightConrad Kaufman (left), his wife, Rebecca Boase, and their dog, Micah, live on eight wooded acres in Galesburg.“But I don’t hear them,” he shrugs. “I just need the sound around me, because silence distracts me. I play them loud, but I couldn’t tell you what is playing — there’s jazz, rock, classical, a little bit of country.”

Behind the house and garage, Kaufman keeps two vegetable gardens with 40 tomato plants and four flower gardens. He opens the studio to the public several times a year to sell his paintings but invites art students into his studio weekly. Some of his students, he says, have returned every week for 26 years. 

“And the sculpture on the mailbox, that’s our dragon, Murphy,” he says. “He was supposed to scare away junk mail, but he has failed.”

Kaufman’s broad, warm smile reflects the whimsy he brings to his life and his work. Even as he takes a serious look at the future of humankind — he insists civilization as we know it will not survive beyond another 25 years — he accepts what is to come with a sense of peace. 

“No, it doesn’t bother me that civilization will collapse,” Kaufman says. “All civilizations have fallen in time. Today, we are one single civilization, a single culture connected by technology. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth was an eye-opener.”

He refers to the book and documentary by former United States Senator Al Gore about the destruction of our planet through global warming as a result of humankind’s carbon emissions and lack of care for the planet. The 2006 documentary reenergized the environmental movement. 

Fran DwightConrad Kaufman's Fence Rows Studio is a workshop, artist studio, and gathering place for fellow artists.“I live an organic lifestyle, but I’m not overzealous,” he says. “It is all about the quality of life and the quality of death. I enjoy being alive — and I respect life forms; I don’t step on a spider if I can help it. I didn’t study ecology. I lived it. My landscapes in my art represent that.”

Ironically, art was not Kaufman’s first interest or choice in career. At Western Michigan University, he studied anthropology for seven years, nearly completing his master’s before he dropped out of the program. 

“I took a semester of art and was bored silly,” he smiles. “So I took anthro and got hooked. During my master’s studies, I studied ancient manuscripts and got into calligraphy. From that, into poetry. Now I have a really big collection of poetry here — Frost, Whitman, Blake —and I did some illustrations for the poetry. In 1986, I illustrated a poem, stayed up for a week until 3 a.m. working on it for a contest. And I realized, hey, this is fun!”

He won the contest, sold copies of the illustration, and a new path opened for Kaufman. He took a job with a frame maker and learned how to make his own frames, something he continues to do to this day. Along the way, he learned how to take part in art fairs, selling his work. By 1992, commissioned to paint a mural for the Kalamazoo Public Library, he began to see his art as a serious pursuit rather than a sideline, and by 1995, Kaufman was painting murals full-time as commissions poured in. 

Kaufman’s murals can be seen at the downtown library, at many buildings on WMU's campus, the Bangor Health Clinic, Family and Children Services, Tiffany’s, the Kalamazoo County Land Bank, the Firefighter Memorial in Comstock, and Lake Michigan College as well as area schools, libraries, and other places.

Fran DwightMany of Conrad Kaufman's paintings feature spacious, open landscapes with a play of light and clouds.“At some point, doing the murals began to feel too much like a job,” he says. “I now do the paintings and build furniture out of wood and metal, glass and rock.”
Kaufman points to pieces in progress — smaller tables that look like bare tree branches holding up shelves, dining room and conference and coffee tables with live edges, and bar tables that are a fusion of function and form. 

“My mother inherited dull-bladed and antiquated woodworking equipment that fascinated me,” he says. “And the welding — I learned that at age 11 or 12 on the farm. Live on a farm long enough and everything breaks, so you learn to repair things.”

Kaufman paints 40 to 60 paintings per year, he says. About twice that number are found in his home and studio, but they seem to walk out the door in the hands of their new owners on a regular basis. 

“Although I am cutting back on shows now, too,” he says. “Many of my sales are to repeat customers. I try to price reasonably — $2 per square inch, and I mill wood twice a year to make the frames. I keep the frames simple because a frame should never detract from the painting.”

It is hard to imagine that anything could detract from the paintings. The colors are rich and brilliant, the subject matter draws the eye in and keeps it there, lost in the detail. While some are simply an admiration and nod of respect to the beauty of Nature, others reveal a subtle statement of social commentary. 

One painting shows tiny figures in a mad scramble away from a Senate building crumbling among the trees. Kaufman explains — these are the Ents, fantasy creatures from the novels of J. R. Tolkien, but also symbolic of modern-day politicians on the run from a crumbling political system. 

“You’ll notice they are all white men,” Kaufman says. 

Another painting, titled “A Sneeze From Heaven,” shows sun rays splashing through clouds. The painting “Enlightened” is a contrast of golden afternoon light aside a bleak black and white area, as if to ask — which way are we going? 

“Moods are one thing I play with,” Kaufman says. “It is to elicit a response from the viewer.”

Fran DwightIn addition to his artwork, Conrad Kaufman creates whimsical, organic furniture.If Kaufman’s work elicits a sense of spirituality, a reverence for nature, for Kaufman religion is something he views through an anthropological lens. 

“I minored in comparative religion,” he says. “I looked at religion historically, as an anthropologist. My father came from a Mennonite background, and when he was dying, I asked him his thoughts about God. He said he was an agnostic by that point. Religion is necessary to give civilization structure, man-made, but he believed evangelism had fractured us. He no longer believed in the concept of God, only the Holy Spirit and an earth-based spirituality.”

It is a view that the artist, too, seems to have embraced. Whenever he is stressed, he says, he finds his peace by walking in the woods that surround his studio. And although he has cut back on some of his work — the immense murals, the many art shows — he can still be found daily in his studio, painting until late in the afternoon. 
“I still have a couple years’ worth of ideas,” he says. 

The Annual On the Fence Group show and open house, which includes work by Kaufman and his students, will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on August 10 and 11 at Fence Rows studio, 8100 E. Main Street, Galesburg. For more information, call 269-598-6504 or check the website.

Fran Dwight