The Wildling Art Museum opened its fall exhibition, “The Poetry of Nature: Paintings and Lithographs by Russell Chatham,” with a Gala Dinner and Benefit Auction. Chatham was present for the Gala opening on September 15 which began at 5 p.m. with hors d’oeuvres and Alma Rosa wine served in the Museum’s garden.

The fall exhibition featured the work of Russell Chatham, an artist who has lived in the Paradise Valley near Livingston, Montana since 1972, and who is well known for his subtly brushed, mood-filled landscape paintings and for limited edition lithographs of similar subjects printed on a Harris 50-inch power press. The artist, now 68 and in his prime, is also a famous fly fisherman, author, publisher, and former restaurateur, with many friends and collectors in the literary and film worlds.

The exhibition included paintings inspired by the landscape of Montana and of California where he grew up. Like the paintings of his famous grandfather, the San Francisco painter, Gottardo Piazzoni, Chatham’s paintings (and lithographs) are not portraits of a specific place, but tone poems expressing the artist’s deeply felt response to the landscape he has loved.

Since most of Chatham’s paintings are in private hands and new ones are now produced only on commission, this exhibition provided our viewers with the rare opportunity to see a small body of Chatham’s work over the years, both from Montana and California.

Additionally, there was a room full of his lithographs, which are more available these days, along with a video explaining the complicated process he uses.