Distinctly Montana Magazine

d i s t i n c t ly m o n ta n a • s U m m E R 2 0 1 4 38 Still photography slideshow for En Plein Air by Wildman Pictures www.distinctlymontana.com/wildart143 DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL "It's not like it's an easy place to sit down and paint," says Johnson. "The wind, the sun, the mosquitoes all work against you. And you're exhausted. You hike all day long to this unbelievable place and then you're supposed to just be creative. That's sometimes hard." But the rewards of such effort produce work that cannot be dupli- cated from the side of the road. "When I'm painting the rocks on a talus field, I'm painting not just from a visual experience but also from the experience of hiking over them, from experiencing the smells and sounds around me," says Johnson. "If you're wanting to paint a mountain," says Shear, "looking at it from far off you get a sense of it, but if you can stand on it, sweat on it, bleed on it, you're hopefully going to express something a little more authentic." Not far from the Cabinet Mountains, a similar program for artists provides a few more creature comforts but in no less of a wild setting. Developed by the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation, the Flathead National Forest, Hockaday Museum of Art, and the Swan Ecosystem Center, the Artist Wilderness Connection Program places artists in re- mote settings where they can work in solitude, inspired by the wilder- ness just outside their cabin door. Since 2004, the artist-in-residence program has hosted more than 30 Montana artists working in various media on remote cabins in the Flathead National Forest. Randy Beacham, a professional landscape photographer from Yaak, completed a residency in 2013 at the primi- tive Silver Tip cabin, a Forest Service rental on the Spotted Bear River adjacent to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. An outfitter and his horses ferried Beacham and his gear 4 ½ miles to the cabin. Rather than a backcountry trip where he might shoot some- where new everyday, Beacham got to explore the area around the cabin for nearly two weeks. It was an approach that suited Beacham, who has honed a photographic eye for details over the course of nearly 20 years of photographing the subtle beauty of the Yaak Valley. "Once I get to an area, I see what catches my eye and try to tell a story with it, letting the landscape show me what to photograph," says Beacham. This unfocused approach eventually produces a meditative focus on the subtle characteristics of a place—the colorful river rocks and limestome striations in the peaks overlooking the Spotted Bear River, for example. Says Beacham, "I also like the approach of the grand views and put- ting a scene together, but doing the close-up details is sort of a zen-like thing, really letting me get completely focused on whatever I'm photo- graphing." Says Beacham, "At home in the Yaak I have other responsibilities— a job, a house—so ordinarily I might be able to sneak away for just a couple hours at a time a few days a week to work on photography. So to totally immerse myself for 12 days was just fantastic." Randy Beacham Aaron Theisen Silver Tip cabin, adjacent to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area Jared Shear, Scotchman Peaks Wilderness Study Area

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