Local artists gather to participate in World Wide Paint Out

POLSON — If you were in a scenic location and stood still for long enough on Saturday, there’s a chance you were immortalized in a painting by an onlooking artist.

The day marked the observation of the tenth annual World Wide Paint Out — an international initiative aimed to get painters outdoors for a day of fun and creativity.

This was the third year that members of the Polson art community have participated in the event, as a dozen area painters congregated at Riverside Park in the morning to go over ground rules. Needing only to stay outside and granted free reign over the Mission Valley, the group dispersed to the streets, parks, hills, and gardens of the area with only a few hours on the clock.

Though Polson was the lone Montana enclave taking part in the Paint Out, the local artists were by no means alone, as their counterparts in New York, Italy, China, and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso also spent the day outside with brush in hand. In total, artists from twelve countries officially participated in the event.

At the local level, the event is chiefly sponsored by Sandpiper Art Gallery and International Plein Air Painters, according to John Davis, the coordinator of the gathering.

Davis, who now lives in Polson, is a retired art teacher from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He, along with help from other artists in the community, were inspired to get Polson involved with World Wide Paint Out three years ago, and have been having a great time ever since.

“I like to get people out and I like it because it’s free,” Davis said of the public event open to anyone with painting materials and some time to spare.

“It’s a good feeling that you’re taking part in something going on across the globe,” said Carol Daniels of Polson, who has participated in the event for all three years that its been held in the Flathead.

Though the haze of wildfire smoke enveloping the valley obscured the landscape a bit, each of the artists still returned to Riverside with stunning displays of artwork.

Polson’s Nancy Zadra says that the task of beautifying a blank canvas was made even more challenging by the time constraint.

“The real challenge is that you have such a short time,” said Zadra. “You never know how many Michaelangelo threw away, but today the pressure is on to come up with something.”

But they say that pressure makes diamonds, and the pieces produced over the course of the day were sterling, indeed.

Zadra took refuge amidst the scenery of a private garden in Polson and transposed her colorful setting to the easel in less than five hours time.

Joanne Simpson, also of Polson, clutched several magnificent pieces depicting the animals and scenery of the National Bison Range. Simpson says that she got a closer peek at her subjects than she had bargained for when an aggressive bull from the herd nearly charged the car while she was working.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to a bison,” she said of her run-in with the buffalo.

Luke Venters was coming off of a long, sleepless night, but that didn’t stop him from participating in the Paint Out.

“This is the fifth piece I’ve done since the last time I slept,” he said, toting his abstract portrait of an orange face.

Despite the heavy eyelids, he insisted that spending the day painting was a rewarding experience.

“That’s the beautiful thing about art, is that it wouldn’t exist if you didn’t take the time to make it,” Venters said.