Artist strays from trademark style in new show
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ST. IGNATIUS – Louise Lamontagne has spent much of the past 20 years quietly creating art in her St. Ignatius studio, with a picturesque mountain view not unlike the beautiful landscape paintings she is known for.
“When you look up Louise Lamontagne or someone thinks of me, that is what they are going to see,” said Lamontagne as she pointed to a colorful landscape created by working with wax on her studio wall. “I always thought if I ever had a museum show, it would be landscapes.”
But the artist’s first solo museum show is hanging on the walls of the Missoula Art Museum until Sept. 29, and there isn’t a clearly discernible tree, lake, or mountaintop to be found.
“This is totally different,” Lamontagne said.
Named “My Closet Collection,” the pieces are derived from time Lamontagne spent on the coast of the eastern United States, where she did not feel inspired to paint the landscape. Instead, she created approximately 150 pieces by tapping into a raw stream of consciousness and exploring abstraction.
Her routine each morning included a meditation time or reading to help clear her mind. Then, she would paint, scratch or sketch whatever she was feeling.
“I didn’t have an idea in my mind about what they were going to be,” she said. “With a landscape usually I’m either onsite or I have a photo. These came completely from the inside … They all have a story, but the story is unconscious, so sometimes it is hard to say exactly what it is.”
The stories and their interpretation was something Lamontagne intended to keep private. She kept all of the paintings stored away, until a friend saw them and wrote a letter to the Missoula Art Museum and told them about the work. The museum scheduled a studio visit and wanted to show the pieces. Lamontagne was excited, but also nervous about what people would think about the stark contrast between her clearly defined, sweeping landscapes and the abstract, angular, and almost architectural style left open to interpretation.
She need not have worried. The response to the show was very positive.
“Thanks for sharing your ‘intimate and intuitive spontaneous and raw with us! I was taken with them!” wrote Heather Dawson on Lamontagne’s web post about the exhibit.
The artist, who also works part-time as a dental hygienist in Polson, is now focusing on working on her landscapes and experimenting with three-dimensional sculptures. Her studio now has a miniature skeleton, nicknamed Slim, that sits with some of the clay pieces being made.
“I seem to be gravitating back to the three-dimensional stuff,” Lamontagne said.
