Landscape, Earl Reed

Landscape, Earl Reed, The Casper College Foundation Fine Art Collection

Earl Reed was born April 12, 1893 in Nebraska. He started art classes with a painter of the Hudson River School genre and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The University of Nebraska, and the Chicago Art Institute. He moved to Jackson, Wyoming in 1940; and then Casper in 1944 to teach at Natrona County High School. Reed continued to travel and paint, especially landscapes that engage the senses, embodying the warmth of a New Mexican sun glint on an adobe church or the cool air that would envelop the bright yellow leaves of fall aspen groves on a Wyoming mountain. He started teaching at Casper College, when founded at Natrona County High School in 1945, making him the first art instructor at Casper College.  He was on the Board of the Artists' Guild and exhibited with talented Wyoming artists such as Conrad Schwiering. From the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Oakland Art Gallery, Milwaukee Art Institute, the Taos Harwood Gallery, and the Kansas City Art Institute to the Denver Art Museum, his work was appreciated in galleries across the country. The Casper College Foundation Fine Art Collection includes watercolors, oil paintings, and drawings. Teaching visual art courses at Casper College until 1958, he also gave private art classes until his death December 29, 1980.