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 I grew up in Whitefish, Montana, a place whose character has been completely bulldozed by large amounts of aggressive money, and went to school in Oregon and later, Missoula, where I live now. Through happenstance and proximity I worked quite a few years in Glacier Park and eventually needed a way to respond to it in a way other than climbing and skiing and fishing, and started painting. I doubt I'll ever stop. I don't have much of an artist's biography, a succession of awards won, shows held, exhibits entered. I've done some of that but don't have much interest in such things, though it would be nice to make a living painting. But no thatched cottages beside a stream, majestic elk bugling, or Blackfeet warriors returning from a raid, thanks. I need something real to respond to, real sunlight, real snow, real water. I admire very much the work of the Canadian Tom Thomson, whose paintings are abrupt, direct, and either beautiful or complete train wrecks. Better to have nine train wrecks and one real painting, than ten competent pictures, I believe. That is where I want to be with my painting, walking that sort of ridgeline, with a fall on either side and the only way up, or down. |