Thwack, whizz, thwack. As Ben Miller’s sopping wet, paint-soaked “fly” hits the plexiglass, sound becomes a backdrop to his movements. His eyes squint to measure the sun’s position; he notices the flora and fauna. His painting feels intuitive, as if all of Miller’s years of...
Lisa Simon, owner of Radius Gallery in Missoula, Montana, still remembers her earliest encounters with Stella Nall, whose Native name is Bisháakinnesh. “She had such clarity of who she was and what kind of art she was creating,” Simon recalls. “Even though she is so humble,...
When Charles Fritz moved to Montana in the 1980s, he ran into a problem. Up until then, the Iowa-born artist had carved out a niche for himself in the watercolor market, painting sporting still lifes: wooden decoys, hanging mallards, shotguns. “But when I came out...
Amy Lay is a full-time artist. Her work appears in galleries across the country, from Manchester, Vermont to Whitefish, Montana. But she’s also a full-time homesteader — the fourth generation to run her family’s ranch in Oregon. “This property and this lifestyle, they’re responsibilities that...
Kimball Geisler paints landscapes that draw people outdoors. Whether it’s the distant peaks draped in stubborn snow or the murmur of water skimming a bend, Geisler brings the universal intimacy of nature to his work. To be clear, he doesn’t paint portraits of landscapes; instead, he...
Lois Keister of The High Lonesome is a layered mix of grit and grace. A contemporary Western artist based in Montana’s Ruby Valley town of Sheridan, she creates fine art glassworks for both display and use. But Keister doesn’t just work in glass, she embodies...
Imagine a history professor who, instead of writing monographs, got some canvas, took up a paintbrush, and tried to tell the story of the West through a series of vignettes in oils. That might be the best way to describe Don Oelze: he paints history....
From an early age, Montana-based illustrator and painter John Potter has treated the world — the land, the animals — as family. “The trees feel like relatives, the mountains like grandfathers,” says Potter. “That’s how I look at the natural world.” Growing up, his mother...
Jim Bortz has been many things. He’s worked at a steel mill and on construction sites, repaired cable lines, led expeditions as a fishing guide, tended bar, and apprenticed with a taxidermist. He’s a lifelong sportsman and artist, self-taught in both fields. But these days,...
Maps hold a promise of roads untaken, the allure of the exotic, and adventures yet to come. For James Niehues, a legend in the ski world for his bird’s-eye maps, his works are much more than renditions of place. They combine panoramic views of the...