Artist of the West: Defending Wild Places

UNDER A PERFECT SQUARE COLUMN OF MONTANA’S PUREST LIGHT, MONTE DOLACK CONCENTRATES ON A NEW PAINTING, A DEPARTURE FROM HIS ART POSTERS AND TRANQUIL LANDSCAPES INDELIBLY IMPRINTED ON THE WEST, ADDING CONTEXT TO SUBTEXT. His new work incorporates the simple paradigm — water, meadows, mountains, sky — that embodies the Rockies, and embeds the image with iconic toys (think army men and model planes), old cell-phone parts and computer vestiges that seem to bubble up from beneath the surface itself. He says it repeats an ongoing theme, the “triumph of nature over technology,” but in this case it’s difficult to see nature coming out victorious.

His Missoula studio, a converted garage, is crammed with so many objects it’s like going into a great old junk store. The shelves above the back window display Barbies from various eras, one with her arms raised high as if cheering him on, dinosaurs, a crane and a few cowboys. His computer top is the base for a hula dancer and a dodo bird. The space doesn’t feel cluttered but rather full, and nearly complete.

For more than 30 years Monte Dolack’s posters and graphic art defined Montana populist culture. Not only is his art emblematic but the mention of his name alone evokes a definitive adjective of style.

“I’m representational by nature,” he says, grabbing a brush and mixing colors. “I’m not an abstract painter. I like to juxtapose and create a narrative … maybe I’m a bit more poetic than narrative.”  

Dolack’s interest in myth as lessons underlies much of the symbolism in his work. Like the old storytellers, Dolack can load up an image swollen with meaning and put it in a framework that jolts the viewer into a new perspective. In a newer piece called Taurus, Dolack brings together an historical perspective on the bull: the Greek legend in which Zeus assumed the form of a bull himself to carry Europa over the sea to Crete; a bull rider; the beast of burden; the Egyptian bull, Apis, who was worshipped for renewal; and a cattle-crossing sign. Taurus reminds us of ourselves, how we invest in symbols and how they reflect our humanity.   

“Normally, I plan my pieces,” he says, pulling out sketches, with even minute details penciled in. Then he turns back to the canvas on his easel, “But with this piece it’s coming together as it happens, which is kind of scary and a lot of fun. What I like about working this way is the tension of not knowing what it’s going to be.”

It’s obvious that the act of painting, the newly discovered depths to which he can delve, even after a generation of success, brings a sense of joy and newness to Dolack on a daily basis.

“Almost everything I do comes from ideas I’ve played with in my sketchbooks and journals.” To prove this he walks over to a bookcase lined with journals dating back to his days at Great Falls High School, complete with hippie logos and psychedelic designs. “But then this show came up — a show honoring birds — and I wanted to do something with technology and nature.”

At this point he’s considering imposing a large eagle over the top of the painting. “All I need is a Statue of Liberty and a small Jesus,” he says, looking at the complicated canvas. “Okay … that green is too dark,” he mixes a conglomeration of greens, from a dark military green to a lighter newly grown springtime-green, running his brush in quick circles.

In the 1980s, Dolack’s Invader posters revealed a new way to talk about wilderness, using intelligent wit and style. In Suburban Refuge (1984), wild ducks invade a bathroom; in Kitchen Preserve (1985), ducks take over a kitchen; in Refridgeraiders (1986), penguins invade an icebox; in After Hours (1987), trout swim through a window and fly around a living room; and in Leave it to Beavers (1992), beavers have at it in a log cabin.

Up until that point, Dolack had been making a living as an artist in Montana (no small feat), but the Invader art posters put him on the map.

“I think Monte is probably Montana’s best-known illustrator,” Stephen Glueckert, curator for the Missoula Art Museum, says. “He’s not only dealt with the landscape but he’s done so with a great deal of humor, it’s almost in everything he does. The fish laying across the living room couch, the ducks in the kitchen — he’s taken those things and made metaphors that are really funny. What’s underlying in his work is a deep respect for the land, the pristine part of having grown up here.”

The idea of bringing the wilderness indoors appealed to many and the venue of an art poster made them accessible as well. It was the perfect storm of having the right idea at the right time and doing it so well that it catapulted Dolack into the spotlight. But it is more than that. It’s his political awareness, his responsibility of being an artist, of speaking about the West as a Westerner.

“What first attracted me to his work is still there,” says Bob Durden, curator of the Paris Gibson Square Museum in Great Falls. “There’s a clarity to his work. There’s a wonderfully wry sense of humor that captures the feeling of living in the Big Sky Country. He brings an identity of the West to people. I think of the posters, some of the more humorous ones, and they really capture what it’s like living in Montana.”

For Glueckert, it’s Dolack’s sense of himself as an artist that consistently rings true. “Some of the early and the most recent works show a real serenity and calmness,” he says. “That’s his political statement and his way of creating a political statement. Some people are more heavy-handed but he has a calm approach and he’s true to his own vision, to accomplish what he wants to say. One of the things I appreciate most about him as an artist is his faithfulness to his art and his ability to draw — not only in what he sees in the world but as a foundation to his illustrations and the way he reaches so many people. His drafting skills are kick-ass. I have so much regard for that. We live in a day and age when so much is occurring technically and on the computer people are forgetting how to draw.”

A traveler by nature, Dolack is a sponge, soaking up different cultures and, like the eternal student of our times that he is, taking those cultures back to this studio to study some more. His journals open to neatly written entries, accompanied by intricate sketches that lasso him back to the moment.

“Traveling is my favorite hobby,” he says, as his brush follows the contours of the silver-sided blue-water mouse. “It’s so enriching.”

He talks about trips he’s taken and those he’s getting to take. At a certain point, it becomes clear that he’s already established himself as an artist and now he’s establishing himself as a citizen of the world. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

“You can definitely spot a Monte Dolack, even people who aren’t art aficionados will know his work when they see it,” Durden says. “He’s been able to develop a style that sticks out in a crowd. And he’s very generous with his work — donating his talents to fundraising events around the state — so he’s gained a broad audience for his work. Most people will recognize him for his posters, but the work he does is more him, the work without a commercial bent — that’s Monte. That’s where he gets to take the words out and focus on the subject and those key identifiers start to disappear. He still retains his color, his sense of scale and his ability to capture the essence of living in western Montana, which has a huge impact on his work.”

In his studio, tall, shiny red Craftsman tool chests — the kind you order from the Sears catalogue — box him into his painting area. Drawers slide open to reveal stocks of tubes and jars of paint, both oil and acrylic. Music sprawls out like a cat in the sun. A Philip Glass soundtrack, The Illusionist, waxes and wanes as Dolack suddenly adds pink to the dark canvas, near a plastic Elvis, and the mere addition of the color becomes a factor in the ugliness of our throwaway culture, like a wad of Bazooka found under a desk.

“Sometimes I come out here after dinner,” he says, dabbing and jabbing at the work. “I’m tired and say to myself that I’ll work for one song. And pretty soon the whole hour is gone by.”

“He’s really supportive of other artists and young people,” Glueckert says. “We have a great deal to learn from that. He and his wife, Mary Beth, have had the gallery for 25 years, helped the museum, the university art students and the community. He doesn’t need to do that stuff, but he does and I really appreciate that.”

On Front Street, in Missoula, Dolack’s gallery, aptly called Monte Dolack Gallery, has become a mainstay in the Missoula art scene, supporting the arts and selling his own work. It’s both a centerpiece of the art scene there as well as a pillar. Inside, the iconic posters he’s known for as well as the newer paintings embrace and surround. It’s like a bigger, neater version of his studio. It even has a display case of toys.

When it comes down to it, Dolack’s point of view, his stance and standing, relies heavily on his acute sense of place — which comes through in everything he does. Whether he’s taking the long view, as if through the wrong end of a telescope back in time, with his symbolic mythological pieces, painting pastoral landscapes or gluing army men to a canvas, his aim is true. It is Montana. It is the West.

Michele Corriel lives and writes in Belgrade, Montana.