Don Koestner:American Impressionist Painter

For over 30 years, Master Framers has enjoyed a gallery relationship with Don Koestner. Not only did Master Framers exhibit Don's paintings in their showroom, but they also provided many of the hand finished frames seen on paintings done during that time. Master Framers also hosted several exhibits of Don's paintings and ink sketches over the years.
It is with sadness that we note Don's passing on December 23, 2009. To read the obituary click on this: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/twincities/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=138102951

There is also a nice article about Don's life found at this link: http://www.startribune.com/obituaries/81050642.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

About Don Koestner

For 55 years, Don Koestner captured the interplay of light upon our upper Midwest landscape. "Painting", he said, "is what I do and who I am..." He's worked in subzero temperatures (as low as -15 F, standing on snowshoes at his painting sites and mixing kerosene with his paint to keep it from freezing.) And he diligently worked through summer months when the sun has beat down on his head while the black flies have crawled up his pant legs and down his collar. Koestner's focus has been on capturing fleeting light effects-those light phenomena that disappear with a blink of the eye. Like magic, they are there and then gone. We forget them soon enough. But with Koestner's acute visual memory at work, that ethereal light is captured for all to see. In every painting, there is as much of Koestner's insight as there is nature. Light strokes the natural world and then is locked in a moment of time.

"He lives what he preaches..."

Amazingly, his wife Fern, whom Koestner married in 1960, not only supported his humble (some would say, primitive) lifestyle but invigorated his energies and anchored his worries with practical words of advice. Koestner said that in their 44 years together as soul mates, business partners, parents of two children and joint observers of nature, "we adopted the phrase "Oh, something will turn up," and it always did whenever money got troublingly low. Fern died in 2004 from lung cancer. Nevertheless, Koestner has continued to live in their North Shore cabin-turned home, where they lived together for the past 18 years. "For most of our years together, Fern and I lived considerably below what the government declares poverty level, but we did not feel deprived and did most of the things we wanted to."