Russell Chatham has constructed a surprisingly elegant life in south central Montana. On the welcome sign, Livingston is heralded as the “original” gateway to Yellowstone. Apparently Gardiner, a tourist town now thriving just outside the northern gate, has usurped the gateway title. Most Yellowstone visitors now bypass Livingston altogether – taking a left on highway 89 and never looking back. The few discerning people that do choose to turn right, many times come for one reason – Russell Chatham. Russ is a legend in these parts and well beyond. He has lived his life full throttle – painting, printing, and writing are his profession. Hunting and fishing are his outdoor passions. Wine, women and food are the carnal pleasures. But these days he is looking to simplify. He has closed his four-star restaurant, there is now only one woman who has his heart, and he has made peace with his past.

Chatham has found the perfect spot in which to write the next chapter, so to speak, a small island surrounded by the Yellowstone River just five minutes from Livingston. We bump along the dirt road passing a modest home, a couple of wary deer, a pond, while navigating an obstacle course of trees and brush, to finally arrive at the outer edge of the island’s 30 acres. In the late afternoon autumn light we take in a perfect view of the river as it splits in two to meander around what will soon be the Chatham homestead. For this world class painter and outdoorsman it represents all things good in his life – the landscape he loves to paint, the river he loves to fish, the home he will make with his girlfriend of 12 years. It seems that after all these years, Russell Chatham is finally ready to settle down.

To say Chatham came by his painting talent naturally would be a grand understatement. In October of 1939 he was born into one of California’s great artistic families. Russ had a paintbrush in his hand by the age of seven, and his art school was his grandfather’s ranch in the foothills of Carmel Valley. His grandfather, Gottardo Piazzoni, was one of the great California mural and landscape painters working at the turn of the century. In fact, a couple of Piazzoni’s murals, originally done for the San Francisco library, have recently been restored and relocated to the brand new de Young museum. Chatham is working on establishing a museum dedicated to his grandfather’s work. He thinks Marin County would be a good spot, but admits it’s just an idea at this stage – one of those things he wants to get done sometime soon.

Chatham was just a boy when his grandfather died, but Piazzoni’s influence was, and is, profound. Chatham literally came of age in the shadow of a legend. “Painting was easy when I was a kid. I didn’t really realize what I had to live up to until I was in my twenties,” Russ explains. While the artistic inspiration was ever present in his childhood, the normal family structure was not. “My family was very dysfunctional. My father was a terrible alcoholic. He just didn’t have the energy for the kids. My mother, too. I think my restlessness comes from being raised that way. There was always something missing.” Something of a wild child, Russ spent a lot of his time fishing, hunting and painting on the family’s Central Coast ranch. By the time he was in his twenties, his touch and talent with a fly rod, had made him a legend and opened up a writing career. He paid the bills by writing articles for the likes of Sports Illustrated and Outdoor Life.

Chatham loved California, but the times were changing. Chatham was increasingly frustrated with his native state – to his mind, people were wrecking the place. A fishing trip to Montana changed the course of his life. “I could rent a place, on the banks of the river, for $500 a month. It didn’t take long to make a decision. I went home, packed up my stuff and moved to Montana. I’ve been here ever since.” And he didn’t go alone. Many of his buddies – artists and anglers, too – also landed in Paradise Valley. Writers like Tom McGuane and William Hjortsberg also put down roots. They were a high testosterone bunch right out of a Hemingway novel, although Chatham shies away from any comparison to the great writer. “You can’t dismiss him as a writer. Art was everything to him, but basically he was much more aggressive than I would ever want to be, so I don’t relate to him on a personal level,” he says. Not aggressive? What about the hunting and fishing – two of Chatham’s pursuits that require a certain amount of, well, violence? Chatham addresses that apparent contradiction in his many essays on the subject. This is from his book Dark Waters:

Chatham doesn’t have an answer other than to say it is as much a part of him as his need to paint. Montana proved the perfect backdrop for his all of his passions – trout-filled rivers, unspoiled forests and vistas worthy of a great painter. To be sure, he has grown frustrated with his adopted state in recent years, as well. “Too many people. Too much development,” he almost spits. He has threatened to pack up and move to British Columbia, but when you see the way his whole body seems to relax as soon as he gets to the banks of the Yellowstone River, you know he’s probably just blowing off steam. As long as he can escape to his own private piece of the great outdoors, Chatham is likely to stay.

Call it artistic ADD – Chatham had his hand in so many things that by the age of forty he felt his painting was suffering. He pulled back on the writing and faced his family’s legacy head on. During this period he polished his signature style -the deliberate brush strokes of muted color so superbly blended together as to create a sublime landscape even Mother Nature could celebrate. Many have called his work subtle or subdued, but he bristles at the description. “I’ve always thought of myself as a colorist,” he explains. “I’ve heard the comment that my work is subdued and I think it’s foolish. If you go back in time you find there are no great paintings in history with color. Everything is a matter of gray. It’s the relationship of one color to another that matters.” You have to look no further than Chatham’s studio to know he takes that philosophy to heart. He starts with primary colors, mixes his own hybrid hues, and then meticulously applies the paint one horizontal line at a time. Each inch he brings in just a dab more color – orange or red -depending on placement. His touch with color is so delicate that the changes are almost imperceptible. “I like the 30 feet, three feet, three inch rule. A painting should be interesting at all three distances,” he says. No question, Chatham’s paintings are indeed compelling at all three, but it’s up close and far away that they pack the most punch. At three inches, you can see every deliberate brush stroke and its relationship to the next. At thirty feet you can appreciate the whole – invariably a soothing sublime and always emotional experience.

Since his first exhibit back in 1958, Chatham has had somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 one-man shows at museums, art centers, private galleries, schools and colleges, but these days he paints only on commission. While I was there he had just finished a piece that had taken nine months to complete. Chatham framed it up himself. He used to be a carpenter when he was younger and in fact, he used to make his own frames. These days he just handles the mounting part. “I have nightmares about doing this,” he says. “One misplaced screw and the whole thing can be ruined. Nine months of work down the drain.” Fortunately that doesn’t happen. Headland on a Winter Afternoon is safely crated up and sent on its way to a client in Los Gatos. It’s an honor to see an original Chatham oil. Since almost all of them hang in private collections, most people will never get the chance to see one. Fortunately, Chatham is also a world-class printmaker. Granted, it’s not the same as an original oil, but the lithographs are, in their own right, beautiful interpretations of Chatham’s vision.

To appreciate a Chatham lithograph you have to understand the process. The difference between a four-color reproduction and an original lithograph is like the difference between McDonald’s and a gourmet meal. Four-color starts with a photograph of anything really – a painting, a landscape or even a new car. In a photo lab, the image is separated by a special camera into four basic color elements: red, yellow, blue and black. The four-color negatives are then used to make four printing plates that are mounted on a printing press to create the final four-color reproduction.

An original lithograph is a little more complicated. Every plate is hand drawn by the artist. As many as fifty different colors may be used in one work, and every color requires its own plate. One print can represent 200 hours of work or more. Chatham works with master printer Geoff (pronounced Joff) Harvey. “It’s a total collaborative effort,” says Chatham. “I draw the plates, but Geoff has to translate my vision for color onto the plates.” They run the actual printing on an old 1950’s-era Harris- Seybold press that has been modified for fine art printing. “Keeping the old thing running is a challenge,” Geoff admits, “but these days, knock on wood, its been running pretty well.” Chatham discovered Geoff in Phoenix in the early 1990’s and talked him into moving to Montana. Chatham knew Geoff loved to fish. “He invited me up here to go fly fishing. He knew I’d be hooked,” laughs Geoff. So Harvey moved and set up his own fine art printing shop in Livingston. They’ve been a creative force ever since.

Despite his promise to himself to remain focused on painting, Chatham was a busy man during the last decade of the 20th century. In addition to painting and printing he also created Clark City Press, which has published some 28 books of fiction, non-fiction, art, photography and children’s classics since opening in 1989. He’s written three books himself. He never made money at it. It was just something he wanted to do – just like his four-star restaurant. Livingston Bar and Grill opened its doors in 1995 and quickly became known as one of the best in the state. “I’m restless. I wanted to see and learn things and nothing would stop me. I mean, I recklessly spent every cent I ever made. I don’t have a dime and I don’t care. I recently decided to close the restaurant because I didn’t have the energy to restructure the kitchen. People ask me if I lost money? Yeah, I probably did, but so what? I mean, how many people have the experience of creating and running a fine restaurant for ten years – doing it exactly the way you want to do it, providing jobs for 25 people and making it work for ten years. I don’t care how much it cost. It was worth it.”

Professionally Chatham was on a roll, but his personal life was a mess. His third marriage was ending, and a nasty divorce settlement plunged him into debt and despair. It was time to take a long hard look at himself. “I went through a shitstorm. I hit a wall emotionally and I needed a therapist to walk me through. I did that for five years and I unraveled a lot about why I did certain things that were destructive. So now I’m operating on a clearer plan, understanding what I really need to make myself happy and what I don’t. The emotional energy I wasted on certain things is now more clearly channeled into the work. I’m writing better and painting better,” Chatham says. Simplify. Chatham has closed the restaurant and put the building up for sale. He wants more time for writing and painting. The earlier excerpt not withstanding, most of what Chatham writes is funny. Here’s just a snippet from a short story he wrote on eating duck – a pastime he elevates to an almost religious experience, and apparently more than a few duck hunters agree. Chatham says he’s been told that for many hunting clubs, the reading of this story, out-loud, is part of their first-day-of-the-new-season ritual. Here’s an excerpt:

“My father was a sensitive man whose spirit had been utterly broken early on, and he replaced it with a shroud of ennui which effectively kept life at arm’s length. His systematic self-denial only faltered when there were ducks for dinner. Duck was the only food to which he ever really warmed, and in defense of the quality of duck as dinner, he forbade serving it to guests or children, neither of whom could be trusted to appreciate it. I even think the failure of his marriage was largely due to the fact that his wife ‘didn’t think ducks were that good.’

It must be an inherited characteristic. When I catch trout I normally turn them loose afterward. And even when I take one home knowing it will be delicious, I’m still far more interested in catching the fish than eating it. The same with grouse, certainly a delectable bird. And so it goes with bass, salmon, pheasant. But when I see a duck, even one of those on a city-park pond that takes bread crumbs out of the palms of old ladies, the desire to kill and eat is almost Satanic.”

He has also come to terms with his past – his parents’ failings and his grandfather’s greatness. “I think I have lived up to expectations in the sense that I have stayed in an honorable position, which is all that matters. In terms of greatness I don’t think its possible for me to be a great artist. My grandfather was that. In my experience great artists are almost oblivious to things around them. Their focus on their art is so powerful they can’t do anything else. I think I’m very good, and that’s what I’m going to be. I can’t eliminate other things in my life – other passions. I love them all.”

Good but not great? There are plenty of collectors and critics who would argue the point, but that would be to miss the point. Chatham has moved beyond all the comparisons. He has found his own voice and refined it – with words and images. Even if he is reluctant to say it out loud, he knows he is moving to a new level. “Thirty or forty years ago I had a powerful dream that I came into my grandfather’s house and there were hundreds of people there, more people than could ever fit. It was a like a big open room that stretched way back and over the heads I could see the tops of these paintings that were my grandfather’s. But I’ve seen every painting he ever did, so why haven’t I seen these? I was furious at my mother and my aunt. Why have they not shown them to me before? No one would answer me. It was a very powerful dream.” Chatham pauses before continuing. “I think I’m painting those paintings now. They weren’t my grandfather’s paintings at all. They were mine.” It took a lifetime but Chatham has finally arrived at the moment when, for him, dreams come true.

Written by: Erin Clark
ARTWORKS Magazine – Winter 2006