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Sommer’s body of work was the seemingly rural things — barnyards, children, horses, apples — found within Brandywine, Ohio, where he turned an old school house into a studio. Sommer and his colleagues painted with watercolor at Brandywine, because they could work spontaneously and it would dry quickly. Rejecting the conventional ideas of beauty, they strove for the expression of emotion, spontaneity, and fantasy.
The unique qualities of fantasy and otherworldliness are imbued in Sommer’s watercolors. His sole purpose was the depiction of the inherent spirit of things — the spirit of nature, and the spirit of the animals.