Painting from the heart in Glacier

In 1925, artist Nellie Knopf left Illinois and pointed her car for Glacier National Park.

A newspaper at the time said she never learned to drive in reverse and was "always going forward."

"She was hard of hearing and didn't let that stop her," historian Denny Kellogg said. "She was an amazing gal, to come alone and venture all over the park."

The drive is easier today for Flathead Valley artist Rachel Warner, though the landscape is no less inspiring.

Knopf represents one of the first women artists to paint in Glacier National Park, and 90 years later, Warner is among the youngest, best-known artists to wield her brush there.

"Out of the blue, I was jumped into a fabulous sorority," Warner said.

Warner and Knopf are among those whose work is included in a new exhibit at the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell. "A Timeless Legacy — Women Artists of Glacier National Park" debuts Thursday, May 28.

The show includes about 50 paintings on loan from across the country by eight "legacy" painters and by four painters still alive.

The painters from the 1920s to about the 1960s are Knopf, Leah Dewey Lebo, Kathryn Leighton, Elizabeth Lochrie, Lucille Van Slyck, Elsa Jemne and Merle Olson, with the four women artists working today including Warner, Carole Cooke of Colorado, Kathryn Stats of Utah and Linda Tippetts of Augusta.

"Being the youngest, I'm just beside myself to stand with the three other contemporary painters. They are rock star women artists in America," Warner said.

The exhibition will be up May 28 to July 18. A book and a documentary film on the same theme also debuts this month. Ed Gillenwater of Bigfork filmed the four contemporary painters during a weeklong plein air painting trip in Glacier last summer. That became the launching point for telling the story of all the artists.

Warner said her favorite legacy painter is Jemne, who "did a lot of Blackfeet paintings, and they were fabulous."

The contemporary artists in the exhibition were frustrated to see the legacy artists largely written out of history, Warner said.

"The assumption is these women must not have been very good, that they must have been hobbyists," Warner said. "No way, they were contenders. Somehow we didn't know about them.

"The sentiment of this show is optimistic and exciting, a celebration of work done in the park in the past and present," she added.

Van Slyck of Ohio was another interesting character, painting in Glacier in the late 1920s. She was the first visitor to the park one year, arriving in April and snowshoeing into Many Glacier with a 45-pound pack on her back, said Tabby Ivy, who curated the exhibit with Kellogg and Elizabeth Moss.

"Someone sent a ranger to find her. They were concerned about her being in the park by herself," Ivy said. "She had already set up her camp and had coffee on when this gallant guy sent to rescue the damsel arrived. She poured him a cup of coffee."

Van Slyck married a wrangler in the park and settled in the area. She painted in the park into her 50s.

"They asked why would she go up there in the snow to paint, and she said she wanted to get the reflection of the melting snow off the lakes," Ivy said. "She was true to the en plein air experience of being there and capturing the moment."

That spirit carries on with the contemporary artists. Tippett, nationally known for her Glacier paintings, says painting in location is the most honest way.

"It's pure dialogue between the artist and the subject," she said.

Tippett spends time in the park looking for the same thing as any other artist — "an 'aha' moment that says I want to paint this."

She recalled hiking to Iceberg Lake and seeing incredible light.

"I minimized those elements that could be minimized and concentrated on the light," she said. "The icebergs were plentiful — you never know until you see it in the moment."

Exploring the park brings opportunities for adventure, too. Tippetts spent a night in her car only to wake up unable to see out of the windshield, which was covered in ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980.

She's been pelted by pebbles thrown by people trying to warn her of a grizzly bear watching her paint, and she's had to quickly pack up her easel when a ranger warned her of an impending avalanche.

Since the men who painted in the park had commercial expectations the women largely struggled to attain, they painted differently, Kellogg said. Sometimes they had to disguise their gender by signing their initials.

"If you look at the perspective of these women, they were not painting to meet someone else's expectations," he said. "The paintings are purely from their hearts.

"It's a whole different take on the park. The paintings show more emotion and depth of understanding, more of their own feelings in," he added. "The paintings are more impressionistic than the men so the women were a little ahead of their times."

The contemporary artists have found national followings "and they were humbled to see what these women had done 90 years ago," Kellogg said.

"Not only were the conditions more primitive, but they were fighting social norms. Women were supposed to be in the home painting still lifes, not trucking around the mountains on snowshoes," he said. "They were groundbreaking in that sense."

Some of the women Kellogg has researched for 15 years.

"Even those who were married would leave their husbands for painting season and go to Indian reservations. It takes a lot of guts to go out on your own like that," he said.

Then he and Ivy realized that women also walked the Oregon Trail and homesteaded Montana. They were tough.

"They were independent, doing their art and coming to a place that inspired them — and that still happens today," she said. "We shouldn't be surprised women were the same in the 1920s. They just had a harder go than our four contemporary artists, but they did what they had to do to get here to paint."

The paintings compare well with contemporary artworks, Ivy said. Knopf is the artist who set the project into action. She was flamboyant and must have told interesting stories.

"She'd be right at home today," she said. "Their energy and personalities come out in their paintings. As you get to know these women and how they paint, you can understand their approach."

Leighton was the best known, a significant figure in Western circles with a reputation for her portrait of Native Americans. She met C.M. Russell in California and he hosted her at his Glacier cabin Bull Head Lodge. The Great Northern Railroad commissioned portraits of Blackfeet elders.

Everyone who sees the park feels like they are the first to see it, as Glacier Superintendent Jeff Mow says.

"It's a very personal experience for a visitor, and if you're an artist who can translate that experience into a painting, we're all better for that," Ivy said.

Warren is a fifth-generation Montanan and lives on her grandparents' spread in Columbia Falls. She draws constant inspiration from the park so nearby.

"We can come out here and remember our smallness. It gets us aligned and just visually, from an aesthetic point of view, it's more to work with than any artist could ever handle," she said.

"Everything in the Two Medicine Valley is special to me because that's where so much of the Blackfoot traditions take place, and a lot of the most majestic mountains are on that side of the park," she said. "Sun Point (at St. Mary Lake) is breathtaking. You stand in the middle of this grand landscape. It moves my soul."

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at kinbody@greatfallstribune.com. Follow her on Twitter at @GFTrib_KInbody.

What:A Timeless Legacy - Women Artists of Glacier National Park

Exhibit open: May 28-July 18

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Admission: Adults $5, Seniors $4, College $2, K-12 and members free

Location:Hockaday Museum of Art is 302 2nd Ave. E., downtown Kalispell

Online:www.HockadayMuseum.org

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Launch event:A Timeless Legacy - Women Artists of Glacier National Park:Conversations with the Artists

When: 4-5 p.m. Thursday, May 28

Admission: $10/person, members/free

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Reception:

Opening Reception for A Timeless Legacy - Women Artists of Glacier National Park

Thursday, May 28: 5-7 p.m.

Free admission