“Wind River, ” a new painting by Charles Munch for our Summer in Wisconsin exhibition embodies many of the issues that interest Munch.  As he says, “I really do want people to care about what nature is.  I want people to be more in tune with nature as one of the big forces in the world, something to be reckoned with, to be respectful of, to take pleasure from.  It is not just something to be ignored, exploited, or conquered.”   As in many of Munch’s paintings, human and animal life interact in an enigmatic fashion surrounded by a meticulously painted landscape.  Charles Munch’s penchant for color comes from his training in art conservation, where colors cannot be approximate, but must be exact.  Brush strokes are purposely made as smooth as possible, lending more importance to color and the reductive composition.  Wind River measures 39 inches tall by 63 inches wide, and like all of his large work, the details have been carefully worked out in a much smaller version.