Kent Crookston painted Sunset on Y Mountain after climbing the famed slope during BYU’s 2005 Homecoming celebration.
A professor of crop sciences for more than 30 years, R. Kent Crookston (BS ’68) confesses: he is not an agronomist at heart. “The real me is an artist,” he says. Born and raised on a farm in Alberta, Canada, Crookston took up the brush at age 14 when a broken leg precluded him from chores. He’s produced between one and four oil paintings nearly every year since. “I envy people who can take their first love, their most precious love, and make a living at it,” says Crookston, who spent his own career researching crop management domestically and abroad in several African countries—most notably Morocco, where he helped establish a graduate-level agricultural university. He served seven years as dean of BYU’s College of Biology and Agriculture. Eight of Crookston’s paintings hang on campus; Sunset on Y Mountain, featured here, is in the Friends of the Library conference room on level 6 of the Harold B. Lee Library.
View Kent Crookston’s work at more.byu.edu/agronomist.
