Driving back into Idaho through eastern Oregon last week, I was reminded of the profoundly beautiful skies and land where we live. The landscape paintings of John Taye, mainly rural scenes in Canyon County, are part of the exhibit, “Realism Revisited: Paintings and Sculpture by John Taye,” open now through Dec. 16 at the Friesen Gallery in the Brandt Center on the campus of Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa. It is curated by Amy Gilles, Assistant Professor of Painting at NNU, and her students.

Many of the paintings celebrate the rural beauty around us. A stunning large painting, “The Road West (2022),” at the entrance features a big and cloudy sky with a low-lying horizon. He calls it a signature painting of his interest in landscape. “… I love the wide openness of the area, the skies, the ever-changing farm fields, the telephone poles, and clouds, of course. I love the spacious clouds and a low horizon,” he tells me.