LIVE AUCTION

Works available for bidding beginning Friday, January 22, at 12 p.m.

Three in person Quick Finish Nights will take place on January 28, February 11, & 25. Each event will feature a special Quick Finish artist creating on-site at the YAM and a cash bar. Details on the featured artists can be found on the next page. Three virtual Quick Finish Nights will take place on February 4, 18, & March 4 on Facebook Live at 5 p.m.

Bidding begins Monday, March 1 at 9 a.m.

 This year, all bidding will take place online.  A 15% buyer’s premium (donation) will be charged on all purchases. The buyer’s premium is tax deductible.  The Buy-It-Now price includes the buyer’s premium.  All sales are final.  The YAM may provide delivery of artwork within the city of Billings for a flat rate of $100.  Purchased art may be picked up from the Yellowstone Art Museum beginning Wednesday, March 10 2021. Due to Covid restrictions, all pick ups must be scheduled by calling the museum at 406.256.6804.

ID required for pick up. Art not picked up within ten business days will be assessed a storage fee of $10 per day.

In order to broaden the scope of work selected, this year’s selection committee was again a mixture of art collectors, gallery representatives, and museum professionals. See list on page 67.

Yellowstone Art Auction 53

Ruby Hahn, Acrylic and Mixed Media Artist from Billings, Montana

Ruby is a local emerging artist working with fluid acrylics and other mixed media to create largescale statement pieces. She is inspired by the natural world's inconspicuous relationships and interpretations. Throughout her paintings, she explores the connections between the microscopic and macroscopic realms.

Keely Perkins, Artist from Miles City, Montana, Stone’s Throw Pottery “I use a watercolor style of painting, layering lights to darks, all the while keeping in mind the glazes I use are transparent and the thickness to which the glaze is applied will affect the color and over all feel of a piece. I am a sucker for color. I use bright colors and strong lines to create a strong contrast between the main subject and the background. “

Rede Ballard, Painter and Printmaker from Gillett, Wyoming

Loretta Domaszewski, Contemporary artist from Bozeman, Montana “As a contemporary artist I create visual poetry and the beauty of the land. The spirit of place is my inspiration for a deeper, psychological interpretation of the journey, the personal quest. I search the essence of the natural environment. I become sensitive to its surroundings. Nature speaks: I savor the scents, sounds, colors and movement. I respond, interpret, transcend. I am touched by its life! It is life’s energy I wish to express.”

Robert Tompkins, Impressionist oil painter from Billings, Montana

Tompkins’ style is painterly, in most cases representational, but impressionistic, sometimes abstract, with a respect for color/value, composition and mass. Interpretation of the subject is the intent of each piece with a healthy respect for the principles inherent in high quality art.

Mike Caskey, Artists from Billings, Montana ”My work is a reflection of more common scenes that one would experience just about anywhere in the northwest. Most of my work is local in nature and it allows me to share my passion for this area with the viewer. I chose pastels and oils because they are quick and force me to remain loose.”

Crowley Fleck PLLP supporting sponsors

A&E Design quick finish sponsor

JILL KRUTICK

ROBERT MARS JON LODGE

JEREMY RABUS

Tucson, Arizona

oil on canvas, 24" x 24" Estimated Retail: $2,600 “I am a painter of realism, whose interest in observing the changing moment provides the structure for my work. While my paintings are composed with formal considerations, I’m most interested in expressing the changing nature of all things...things natural, political, and cultural.”

Bozeman, Montana

oil on canvas, 40" x 40" Estimated Retail: $8,000 Diana Tremaine’s paintings are inspired by the natural world around her and informed by her own life’s experiences. With her subjects, she strives to elevate the beauty of a moment. With her process, she communicates the complexity and struggle inherent in life. Tremaine creates intentional surface tension, laying opaque paint over transparent paint, juxtaposing clean, crisp edges with subconscious mark making and chaos, allowing subjective pops of color to float gracefully above deeper discord, in order to allude to differing layers and forms of reality.

Billings, Montana

oil on canvas, 60" x 48" Estimated Retail: $10,000 Allen is a Crow Indian Artist who grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation. He earned his BA in American Indian Studies from Haskell Indian Nations University and his MA in Indigenous Nations Studies from the University of Kansas. His art works reflects his American Indian Heritage.

Red Lodge, Montana

acrylic on canvas, 60" x 60" Estimated Retail: $7,000 “I currently reside and work as a full-time artist in Red Lodge, a proud Montanan, I am connected to all things ‘West;’ inspired by magnificent landscapes and traditional cowboy culture. Primarily working with acrylic paints: vibrant, bold, and fast. A love of crisp marks found in tattoos, comic books, and stained glass influences the black outlines. Utilizing metallic paint pays homage to the Wild West gold rush. My goal, upon completing a painting, is for the viewer to become equally reflective and energized.”

Billings, Montana

acrylic and charcoal on Artforum magazine pages, 42" x 31.5" Estimated Retail: $2,800

“For more than three decades, in a long series of monochrome ‘action’ paintings, I have been lovingly satirizing and critically interrogating Western art and movies. Lately, I have traded this trademark imagery for colorful, collage-based paintings. In these recent works, I am combining pages of advertising from the elite magazine Artforum with boldly colorful painted passages derived from the offbeat imagery and graphics of Italian western films and posters, as well as mid-20th century comic books and cowboy kitsch.”

Redding, Connecticut

acrylic and vintage ephemera on wood panel with UV varnish, 30" x 30" Estimated Retail: $4,000 “This body of work strikes a balance between chaos and control. Employing concepts of abstract expressionism, I begin with paint layers of loose and dynamic brushstrokes on vintage newspaper. Choosing to either highlight or obliterate this record of events acts as rebellion to structure and order. The vintage newspaper is a bridge to the events of the past; anchoring the work in history. The dialogue between the layers of color - the events glimpsed through the paint - sets the palette for the final composition.”

Billings, Montana

oil on board, 12" x 36" Estimated Retail: $4,000 “My abstract art is a reflection of my approach to life. I prefer images that project positive energy conveying a pleasant or serene message. Simplicity and accuracy is a common attribute of my work.”

Bozeman, Montana

oil on masonite panel, 24" x 36" Estimated Retail: $5,000 “I am fascinated by the landscape and culture of the modern West. I find it an odd mix of science fiction and the various histories that have gotten us to this time and place. It is a place both of wonder and dislocation. I feel a new world is being built out of many disparate things and our job as artists is to give it form.”

Bozeman, Montana

oil stain on birch, acrylic on mdf, limited edition series 1 of 3, 33" x 32" x 4" Estimated Retail: $4,800 “My sculptures explore my fascination with three-dimensional geometric form inspired by my lifelong passion for abstract art, color, architecture and light. The process is organic: as I work through refining the forms, it becomes clearer and more developed. I develop a form of visual language, sometimes it sings, and sometimes it mumbles. Sometimes I discover a different dialect that opens up new possibilities. The final piece is a result of refining the visual language until it communicates what I’m looking for.”

St. Louis, Missouri

acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30" Estimated Retail: $2,000 Jeremy Rabus is a painter living and working in St. Louis, MO. His process engages several modes of paint application, all with the goal of a color interaction that stimulates the viewer immediately: a sense of emotion and heightened dramatics is condensed, intensified, and expanded across the picture plane. These serve as a pivot point to a visceral, alternate experience of space, time, and perception.

Bozeman, Montana

Woodblock rubbing — nero and colored pencil, 53" x 36" Estimated Retail: $3,500 Printmaking has a history of using popular imagery, humor, and politics to critique society. My work is an extension of that tradition and I frequently study art history and the work of other artists who have pursued these issues in their work. Initially, the woodblocks were not preconceived, but were open and spontaneous diaries of ideas: one thing led to another. Eventually, a central image would evolve from the drawing and that form would be inlayed into the surface of the block. Now, my woodblocks are predetermined by themes that I choose which govern imagery and format. Keeping this process as intuitive and spontaneous as possible is one of the challenges I focus on.

Eagle, Idaho

modified concrete & mixed media on canvas, 65" x 48" Estimated Retail: $5,200 “I’m an abstract painter, doing so for 55 years. From my daily studio practice comes discovery, meaning, content, questions, what’s real or unreal etc. My work projects energy, process and humor. All I have to say comes from that daily practice, not a preconceived agenda. I’m a process painter looking for an excuse to paint and materials I find often inform the work itself. I’m not an art supply store fan, however Home Depot or hardware stores are my kind of place. Painting is a visual language and it’s not easy to put into words. It’s an emotional experience. I’m looking for some new way of painting or what painting can be. This body of work is about saying more with less, adding and subtracting as the painting progresses. Today’s work informs me for tomorrow’s.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico

digital photograph on cotton rag, dibond mount, satin lamina, 40" x 26" Estimated Retail: $4,400 “My interest is in investigating the more banal peripheral landscapes that often go unnoticed by the casual observer. I choose to shoot in locations that may be viewed as uninteresting or even visually off-putting. Closed and open doors, empty parking lots and forgotten swimming pools draw me into a scene; yet it is my reactions to these objects and spaces that elicit interpretation and projection. This is exciting and challenging for me, to ‘see’ something hiding in plain sight.“

Livingston, Montana

acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30" Estimated Retail: $4,000 “During this era of social distancing, I have had more time to spend in the countryside by myself enjoying the beautiful country we live in. This series of landscapes is the result of the periods I spent enjoying the landscape. The colors are my way of expressing the joy I felt in my heart.”

Los Angeles, California

fumage, enamel, and oil on canvas, 38" x 54" Estimated Retail: $7,000 “I paint because I know no thing.” Like the universe, which is constantly contracting and expanding, the paintings have no beginning or end, just an interaction that flows where time is suspended. Smoke constantly changes its form unpredictably in space and Antonio felt it was the perfect medium with which to explore.

Billings, Montana

mixed media, oil on canvas, 22" x 28" Estimated Retail: $4,800 “The gift lies in seeing a painting, sketch or drawing come fully alive, in a moment of playfulness and joy.”

Billings, Montana

oil on canvas, 24" x 18" Estimated Retail: $2,500 Robert Tompkins is an impressionist oil painter. His work includes floral, landscape and figurative/animal from purely abstract to a bridge between realism and abstraction and is featured in galleries throughout Montana. Winner of numerous awards starting with first place in the Greater Yellowstone Juried Exhibition and multiple honorable mentions. He is the previous owner of Purple Sage Gallery and currently working out of studio in the Montana Power Building in downtown Billings.

Gaithersburg, Maryland

23k gold leaf & acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40" Estimated Retail: $3,500 “Most people struggle and suffer. After a heart attack, I decided to illustrate my struggle. Winter represents struggle. Trees are a sign of strength and stability. Bright sun coming through the trees shows hope. To illustrate hope, I use 23k gold leaf.”

Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico

fiber, 33" x 62" Estimated Retail: $2,500 “I am drawn to the process of art and have thus always enjoyed mixed media; calling on ceramics, printmaking, photography, and fiber to convey my ideas. I often use improvisational machine piecing to capture the feeling of a place or event. Much of my work is an expression of the natural world I see around me.”

Billings, Montana

acrylic on canvas, 48" x 48" Estimated Retail: $3,500 Born in 1983, Judd Thompson spent his formative years growing up on the Crow Indian Reservation, gaining inspiration from the art he was surrounded by in his parents’ business, the Custer Battlefield Trading Post. Judd draws inspiration from Western artists, especially Joseph Henry Sharp. Judd uses his passion for color theory to capture the essence of Crow Country in a variety of media. After graduating from the University of Wyoming in 2010 with a degree in Art & Art History, Judd moved to Billings, MT where he currently resides.

Troy, Montana

oil on canvas, 30" x 36" Estimated Retail: $3,200 “My most recent work has some fun with birds, and the idea of balance.”

New Fane, Vermont

oil on linen, 20" x 30" Estimated Retail: $3,500 “Paintings speak for themselves.” —Carmen Herrera

Helena, Montana

oil, soft pastel, dyed deer hair on canvas, 12" x 12" Estimated Retail: $1,800 “The archaic permeates our modern lives — we walk on the archaic; we drink it; we breathe it. It is landscape: sensuous, visceral, alive. As I walk the land known as Montana, something happens to my understanding of art history. The Euro-American point of view breaks down, the iconic horizon dissolves. Parts, details, surprise from all directions and the circle of the horizon surrounds me.”

Mamaroneck, New York

oil on canvas, 11" x 16" Estimated Retail: $1,500 Jill Krutick is a contemporary abstract expressionist whose paintings trace the artist’s joyful path of self-discovery and creative exploration. Using only texture, form, and color, the artist suggests the intense beauty and constant flux of nature: galaxies, skies, blossoms, and tides. Krutick combines abstract expressionist gestures, impressionist luminosity, and personal symbols of change.

Big Timber, Montana

oil on linen, 11" x 16" Estimated Retail: $4,600 Shirle Wempner was raised on a horse ranch on the outskirts of Billings, Montana. Her experiences growing up on the ranch resulted in a great appreciation of nature and encouraged her to put to canvas the inspiration she experienced on a day to day basis. Working predominately in oils and utilizing broad-brush strokes and palette knife techniques, she creates a feeling of impressionistic realism, concentrating on a painterly representation of the subject matter.

Westminster, Maryland

soft pastel on canvas, 25.5" x 19.5" Estimated Retail: $3,200 “As a lover of art and philosophy, I have always been chasing after conveying to the viewer a subject’s essence. I love to try to capture the essence in a way that has moved me at that moment. The energy of the subject shifts with time, season, light, and feeling. Whether it be a landscape or a figure, everything has a feeling to it. That is what I seek to show the viewer.”

Billings, Montana

mixed watercolor/acrylic on canvas, 24" x 36" Estimated Retail: $4,200 “I am a self-taught, horse crazy, artist. I use a variety of mediums. My style has a wide range to suit the mood of each piece. My inspiration is continuous. But one constant is that my heart and mind collaborate and allow my hand as a vessel to express those feelings for the piece I am working on.”

Lafayette, Colorado

oil on canvas, 30" x 24" Estimated Retail: $3,500 The fine art of David Mayer captures the beauty and color of Colorado and West, from the high plains to the Rocky Mountains and from the Pacific Coast to the desert southwest. His paintings let you experience firsthand the warm light of a prairie morning, the soft, cool colors of blue-shadowed snow, and the brilliant gold of a high country late autumn day.

Bozeman, Montana

oil on canvas, 30" x 40" Estimated Retail: $4,000 “As a contemporary artist, I have a deep connection to the earth as a living body. I see the world through light, layers, and pathways. The spirit of place is my inspiration. I paint to create visual poetry. It is life’s energy and essence I wish to express.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico

oil on board, 35" x 71.5" Estimated Retail: $9,500 “Often, I paint from old photographs of people unknown to me. Some of my paintings inspire the viewers to create their own stories, their own perspectives. This thrills me. A recent relocation to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with its desert landscapes and open skies, has inspired new imagery in a semi-abstract landscape-style that draws on the quintessential Southwestern features.”

Boulder, Colorado

oil on board, 18" x 24" Estimated Retail: $2,200 Born and raised in Northern Utah, Jesse Barrus has always felt most at home in wild places. He seeks to capture this sense of peace in his work. Currently residing in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife Roxy and their dog Sid, Jesse works as a Fly Fishing Guide and an Art Director while pursuing his passion for oil painting.

Great Falls, Montana

soft pastel on canvas, 36" x 36" Estimated Retail: $4,500 “My paintings are all inherently connected to my life and my thoughts. I paint what speaks to me; it’s a personal journey of inner reflection. My animals and I are tangled together in a dance to capture an emotion that is left to the viewer to enjoy and decipher for themselves. Wildlife is boundless like my thoughts. We will dance together for a very long time.”

Billings, Montana

hand-embroidered snapshots, vintage album pages, 40" x 21" Estimated Retail: $1,900 “I use other people’s family photographs to explore our interactions with the ups and downs experienced in daily life. There is a richness in everyday family photos whether or not they memorialize our particular family’s history. When I collaborate with another’s photo, I tease out a common humanity not confined by time, place, or circumstance. I explore our shared human condition to better understand my own. By asking viewers to look carefully, I renew and transform their experience of looking at old photographs. By engaging them with other people’s family photos, I alter the way they see their own. They come to realize, as I did, how universal this form of expression is — and how precious.”

Minneapolis, Minnesota

ceramic, wood, acrylic paints, 68.5" x 75" Estimated Retail: $2,800 “Human emotion comes from the interplay between people, physical space, and emotion itself. The ambivalence of human emotion occurs through unresolved and confusing situations in external and internal matters. An ambivalent moment reveals itself to me, and I depict that gray area of humanity. I recount these unsettled situations so viewers can empathetically encounter the emotions of the human forms I create.”

Ketchum, Idaho

spray paint on deep edged panel with resin, 42" x 32" Estimated Retail: $3,500 Situated somewhere in between representation and abstraction sits the works of artist Rudi Broschofsky. Taking a Street Art approach to Western Art makes his process completely unique to both genres. His paintings are constructed entirely out of spray paint, which is accomplished through a calculated process of creating meticulous stencils with an X-Acto knife. A stencil may take upwards of 120 hours to create and sometimes may only be used once. From nearby, the subject matter is nonrepresentational but with space the composition becomes unmistakable.

Santa Fe, Arizona

oil on canvas, 36" x 36" Estimated Retail: $3,800 “I want to capture the beauty and a sense of time and place, focusing on light and shadow and the abstract qualities in the puzzling shapes that warp over surfaces. I use the colors and tones, along with bright contrasting whites and am engage in the process of ‘the more I see, the more I look, and the more I see,’ and a never ending quest to understand the complexities of the visual world.”

Brooklyn, New York

watercolor on arches paper, 40" x 45" Estimated Retail: $2,800 “Traditional Chinese scholars like to express their feelings through beautiful depictions of nature, thus placing a significant emphasis on the innate ties between man and the environment in which he lives. Likewise, I too hope to draw on those connections albeit in regards to the dilapidation of our natural surroundings. Unlike the odes to beautiful nature of the past, I hope to call attention to the current destruction of nature, perhaps in turn as a reflection of the inner decay of man.”

Cody, Wyoming

acrylic print with floater frame, 33" x 50" Estimated Retail: $5,700 “We are a couple of journalists and photographers. Through the École des Beaux Arts in France, then through a collaboration of nearly 20 years with the main French equestrian magazines for Isabelle, through the profession of hunting guide throughout the world, then thanks to a collaboration of nearly 20 years also with French hunting magazines for Guillaume, we have developed the same passion for nature photography, horses and for their relationship with humans.”

Miami Springs, Florida

watercolor on arches paper, 31.5" x 27.5" Estimated Retail: $3,000 “In every painting I construct and deconstruct myths of a high poetic value; reflection of the experiences of an obsolete system that exterminates ideas and thoughts, which is Cuba, where life is delayed like a timeless pendulum, making me a chronicler without knowing, from the silence, from the grief of my people, catching shadows and dreams to transfigure them in the hereafter.”

Missoula, Montana

acrylic on paper, 31" x 26" Estimated Retail: $3,800 Born in Butte in 1926, Rudy Autio was at the forefront of the contemporary ceramics movement; his ceramic vessels with painterly surfaces became iconic for their striking composition. He executed many architectural commissions with Peter Voulkos, and was a founding artist at the Archie Bray Foundation.

Rapid City, South Dakota

oil on canvas, 26" x 48" Estimated Retail: $3,000 “Through many years of contemplating the relationship between earth and sky, I have played with it in a variety of ways. I continue to do so, as the possible relationships appear to increase rather than decrease. My approach varies from simple observation to intentional manipulation. I am always interested in the idea of a work and in making that idea beautiful.”

Billings, Montana

carbon particle substrate, surface tension, gesso on canvas, 30" x 24" Estimated Retail: $2,000 “I minimize control to maximize accidents. The interaction of gesso and surface tension with layers of carbon particles generates a system that creates the abstraction—reconciling skill and randomness.”

Austin, Texas

ballpoint pen on strathmore paper, 23" x 29" Estimated Retail: $3,200 “I’m a classically trained figurative artist living and working in Austin, TX. I mostly work in watercolor and ballpoint pen. I start with the fluidity and vibrancy of watercolor, then work over it in ballpoint pen in an almost hyper realist fashion. Taking over 100 hours on my large studies, I like to focus on texture and the way light falls on my subject.”

Seattle, Washington

archival print on paper, encaustic, and oil on panel, 24" x 24" Estimated Retail: $6,000 “This series represents the still memory of what landscape was and can be through the work of paint and brush. The element of ether or quintessence is honored by the red bindu, a focal point amidst the chaos. The red element (triangle, house, line), captures the elements of air/wind, water and earth, which support life on this planet. The red house outlines the memories that are embedded in ourselves. This work hopefully provides places for mindful meditation.”

Roundup, Montana

oil on canvas, 24" x 36" Estimated Retail: $2,400 “I try to use my talent as an artist to say something about who we are, who we think we are; where we have been, and where we hope we are going.”