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Making her marks
By
John Stang Flathead artist uses
cattle markers to create jazz for the eyes At first, it looks like
fingerpainting. Raw swift swirls of yellow and green. Zipping and curling
across the 8-by-10-inch canvas. Or splotching and stabbing the remaining
blank space to give it a rough colorful texture. A big letter “C.”
Slightly off-center. Then the first childlike
strokes evolve into something more sophisticated, but also more emotional
than intellectual. Something deeper, but
unplanned. The artwork sort of
flows from Kelly Apgar’s hands and heart, not her brain, as her fingers grasp a
cattle marker — think of a crayon on steroids — that smoothly improvises
whatever vibe that she feels a the moment. Jazz for the eyes, instead of the
ears. It doesn’t
matter what Apgar may or may not have in mind. What matters is what a viewer’s
mind and heart sees and feels. • • • Cattle markers are used
to draw numbers on cattle. They’re
maybe 4 or 5 inches long, maybe an inch thick. They come in several colors, of which Apgar
uses 13. The ingredients are pigments and linseed oil, essentially creating a
type of thickish oil paint. “It’s like painting with a tube of lipstick” Apgar said. A lifelong artist, Apgar
and fellow Montana State University arts students tried out cattle markers
for the first time in 1979 because they were cheap and a bit different from
other painting utensils. Throughout college, Apgar
experimented with other art styles but kept returning to cattle markers. Cattle markers kept her
fingers closer to the board-like canvases, almost constantly touching the
texture and colors of whatever she painted, helping making the picture an
extension of what was inside her. • • • Texture and color leap
from Apgar’s works that are displayed at Paint, Metal and Mud art cooperative
and Montana Stone Gallery in downtown Kalispell and the Sage Spa & Salon
in downtown Whitefish. There’s
lots of red. The other colors are mostly bright. Barns are a favorite
subject because Apgar loves their rough-hewed red vibes. Horses with their
elegant animal shapes are another favorite, even though Apgar never has been
able to afford to own one. Many paintings have a quiltlike
character, filled with fringes and squares. Different types of
letters in the same painting is a common motif. People in her paintings
are borderline ciphers. Every face is a
flesh-colored, hairless oval — the only feature being a quick and simple cross to
portray the eyes and nose. No mouth. That’s
so a viewer will fill in the blanks of a face; his or her past experiences creating a different
story out of a painting than one conceived by Apgar or another viewer. “I want them to bring their own stories to the painting,”
Apgar said. One painting at Paint,
Metal and Mud is of two people in front of a desk with folded white lines
behind it — with a “closed” sign outside a window to the side —
has been interpreted as a hotel lobby, a tavern or a print shop. Each interpretation is correct. Apgar takes the same
tack with her other paintings, such as big and little collections of letters
in numerous shapes, sizes and forms. Some are neatly centered. Some are
off-center, partly hidden or otherwise cockeyed. Almost all have no
obvious or even hidden stories behind them. Instead, their purposes
are to catch a viewers eye, to drag and coax it around the colors, shapes and
textures in the painting — communicating a memory or a feeling or a unique-to-that-person
story subconsciously to the viewer. Apgar said: “You’re
supposed to interact with it. You’re supposed to enjoy it.” • • • Apgar has admired and
fixated on shapes and colors since she was a youth. No real reason why. That’s
just the way her
brain is wired. Apgar —
the 48-year-old great-great-granddaughter of Milo Apgar, who in 1892 set up the first homestead
in Glacier National Park at the south end of Lake McDonald —
first became interested in art in the second grade. She kept that passion through
graduating from Columbia Falls High School. After graduating from
MSU, she earned a living as a graphic designer. She did all sorts of art work
during her sparse free time, typically drifting toward cattle markers. Apgar also taught
workshops —liking
that so much that she earned an elementary school education certificate from
the University of Great Falls. She loved teaching children. Their intuitive — rather than many adults’ analytical | ||
