Event Spotlight | Western Masters Art Show

Majesty of the Tetons by Randy VanBeek

From March 14 to 17, the Best Western Heritage Inn in Great Falls, MT, is the scene of the second annual Western Masters Art Show and Sale. For 40 years, artists have been gathering at the Heritage Inn to exhibit their works and demonstrate their skills, and the Western Masters Art Show continues this tradition. This year, over 140 artists and galleries exhibit work throughout the weekend in hotel rooms that have been transformed into exhibition spaces.

A highlight of the weekend is the presentation of the first annual North Star Award to Oleg Stavrowsky. The North Star Award honors painters and sculptors who mentor younger artists and serve as guides, much as the North Star has served as a beacon and compass to travelers for millennia.

Two Quick Finish events are scheduled on Friday and Saturday afternoons. Both established and emerging artists put the finishing touches on artworks as attendees watch, and then the artworks are for sale in a live auction immediately afterward. Saturday’s event features premier exhibitors, and 50 percent of the auction proceeds of these works go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

The highlight of the Western Masters Art Show and Sale is the Off the Wall live auction at 6:30 p.m. on Friday night, at which 88 lots go on the auction block and 100 percent of the sale price for each work goes to the artist.

Following are some of the artists participating in this year’s event.

When she was 7 years old, self-taught artist Carol Hagan moved to Montana with her family, where she has developed a deep love of the West, the people and animals who have inhabited it, and the landscapes that dominate it. She expresses herself through vivid oil paintings that have both graphically abstract and representational forms. Her wolves, bears, owls, and horses are depicted in flashes of brilliant, unblended color.

Bozeman, MT-based artist D.G. House grew up camping with her family in Ohio. House’s love of the wilderness truly ignited on a 1981 trip to Yellowstone National Park. Today House portrays her two loves—her Native heritage and the American wilderness—in contemporary depictions of Native peoples, wildlife, and the Rocky Mountain West she now makes her home. Her highly stylized animals include blue bears, painted warhorses, and purple moose.

Randy VanBeek hails from the Pacific Northwest where he spent his post-high school years in the libraries of nearby Western Washington University versing himself in traditional realism. Today the OPA member employs glazing techniques he learned during those years of self study in his paintings of Northwestern mountains and landmarks, island and coastal landscapes, and historic Native encampments.

Oklahoma artist Linda Tuma Robertson’s landscape paintings are a combination of realism and impressionism through which she expresses her appreciation for nature, the countryside, and especially the vanishing wilderness of the Americas. Her mountain, desert, and river scenes are often depicted during the color-saturated minutes just before dusk or just after dawn.

For more information: 406.781.0550 or www.westernmastersartshow.com.