The Poetry of Nature: Paintings and Lithographs by Russell Chatham

Excerpts from “Family, Art and Friends”
by Russell Chatham

Snowfall at the Foot of the Absaroka Mtns, 2004

When I was two years old we moved into a house on Pacific Avenue in San Francisco. It had two stories of high ceilings, inlaid floors, leaded glass and marble fireplaces. The effect was stern and gloomy, quintessential San Francisco piss elegance.

In the living room above the couch, between two windows facing the street, hung a painting by my grandfather, Gottardo Piazzoni. It was called The Soil. I would frequently climb onto the couch to look at it up close, enthralled and mystified. The tilled ground in the foreground held my child’s attention as would looking into a fire, and the architectural cloud formation in the sky seemed to speak in a voice from above. I entered the world of this painting completely, as if it were a looking glass.

Whenever my mother caught me with my nose inches from this picture, she would say in her sternest voice, “Don’t touch the painting. Papa says you must never touch a painting.” I assumed this meant it was a sacred object, like a crucifix in the Catholic cathedral where we sometimes went to light votive candles.

By the time I was sixteen or seventeen I must have painted several hundred versions of that one painting, never once approaching an understanding of it. Even now, after I have seen a great many of the world’s finest landscape paintings, none surpass this work’s deceptive simplicity. It is wholely without artifice, its only motive an absolute love of the earth. The painting is random, sublime and plain; tragically and mysteriously beautiful.

It utterly defies explanation...
It is quite possibly a mistake to talk about something you love as much as I have loved painting. After all, words are the source of misunderstanding, as any number of philosophers have pointed out, and only a very few artists have proved eloquent. Rembrandt said nothing, while Van Gogh told everything, but even though the letters to his brother Theo and Emile Bernard are one of the world’s great chronicles, it is only by looking at the work that we come to know Van Gogh.

One reason I have hesitated in the past to say much about my paintings is that I have never felt professionally oriented toward them. Certainly I have never been part of any established group of artists. This lack of affiliation may be all for the better, and no doubt explains why I’ve never been able to put a name to what I do. Rilke said that Rodin had grown beyond the sound and limits of a name so that the work became nameless, “even as a plain is nameless, or a sea, which has a name only upon a map, in books and among people, but in reality is only expanse, movement, and depth.” Painting for me has been largely an innocent obsession, an act of faith, a vocation; I was raised with it and live with it, as do others in my family. Phil, Mireille, and my cousin Tom still paint constantly, and still visit the ranch. To an enormous degree we all owe this pastime to Piazzoni. The great Gauguin asked, “Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” These questions have been largely answered for me through genetic happenstance, enhanced by the love of my parents, aunt, and uncle. I owe them everything. I don’t know if I can ever become a great painter like my grandfather, but I feel worthy of him, and I believe my best work lies ahead. As my friend Harrison once said, “Art is not a sack race.” In any case, by now my imagination has become so entangled with Papa’s that his way of viewing nature’s inner life has to some degree become mine, and my vision is frequently an almost unconscious homage to him. When I wander into my silent living room in the morning before leaving to paint, I look upon the Piazzonis on the walls around me as testaments to honor, love and beauty. They seem like the dawn itself, a perfect presence, perhaps the sun or the grass or the birds. I feel the ghost; I am the three-year-old on the couch again, drawn by the mystery, hoping for the revelation. I always say the same thing, “Thank you, Papa.”

Foreword

The Wildling Art Museum was honored to exhibit the work of the revered artist, Russell Chatham. He has not had many exhibitions in his lifetime, and I now know why. He is always too busy painting, writing, cooking, or fishing to bother about the details of an exhibition. But that is why Chatham is larger than life, and why he is so beloved by fellow artists, sportsmen, authors, publishers, gastronomes, and collectors. Chatham is one of those rare individuals who is both visual and verbal. His emotional life is expressed brilliantly in both painting and writing. The paintings and lithographs in the exhibition, mostly from the artist’s own collection, spoke for themselves. They are lovingly brushed symphonies of the most subtle color, true tone poems in the tradition of the turn -of-the century Tonalists, like his grandfather, the San Francisco painter Gottardo Piazzoni.

His lithographs are complex creations, often involving as many as fifty-four separate plates, produced in collaboration with the Tamarind-trained printer, Geoffrey Harvey, on a Harris fifty-inch power press. Chatham’s writing is equally compelling, and we regret that the size of this publication permits only two excerpts from his autobiographical essay in 100 Paintings, published in 1990, and now out of print. I highly recommend that you read the entire essay if you can get your hands on it. Chatham has many admirers, including a host of younger artists who emulate his mood-filled style, and he also has many writer friends, Jim Harrison and Dan Gerber among them. Gerber, who lives in the Santa Ynez Valley, has known Chatham for more than three decades, since Chatham first moved to Montana in 1972. The association between the two men, painter and poet, is palpable in the painting, Revenant – Deep Creek, which takes its title from Gerber’s poem which Chatham superimposes over the landscape.

We are grateful to so many people for making this exhibition happen, but particularly we must thank Kelli Tikalsky, Chatham’s assistant, who never gave up despite many obstacles put in her path. We also thank Russell himself for lending works from his own collection. It is a rare treat to see a collection of his paintings and lithographs created over a thirty-five year period.

Elizabeth P. Knowles
Executive Director

What is an Original Lithograph?

To understand what an original lithograph is, you need to know how one is produced...
The first step in bringing forth the imagined image is to create a drawing, which will serve as the first key plate, usually, but not always, printed in black ink. This first plate acts as a map for everything that follows, so it must be done carefully. As with watercolor painting, lithographic inks are completely transparent, and so you cannot make corrections. Following this first drawing plate are the colors, one at a time, each one a separate plate drawn by hand. These plates could take as little as twenty or thirty minutes to make, or as long as twenty or thirty hours depending on their complexity. The number of colors, or plates, used in any given lithograph is never the same. It simply takes how many it takes. In my work, that number has varied from seventeen to fifty-four in the production of nearly one hundred twenty editions over the course of the last twenty-five years. Generally speaking, you can print two colors in a day if there are no complications, however, there usually are. Each ink color must be mixed by eye using the primary colors, and what you see on the mixing table is often not what you get on paper. When this happens, modifications have to be made, or worse, you have to clean up and start over. To make one original lithograph can easily require two-hundred hours of both the printer’s and the artist’s time.
-Russell Chatham

Checklist:

Paintings

A Still Day in January, 1988 *
Oil on canvas, 29”x35”
Private Collection

At Night on the Marshall Petaluma Road, 2003
Oil on board, 6”x9”
Collection of Elizabeth Blavatsky

Early Morning, Black Point, 1973
Oil on canvas, 24”x24”
Private Collection

Foothills of the Absarokas, 1993
Oil on canvas, 19”x15”
Private Collection

Forest at Evening, 1979
Oil on canvas, 13”x10”
Private Collection

Grass Fires, 1989 *
Oil on canvas, 19”x15”
Private Collection

Hayfields in Paradise Valley , 1996
Oil on canvas, 34”x46”
Private Collection

On Black Mountain, 2001
Oil on canvas, 30”x36”
Collection of Elizabeth Blavatsky

Pond at Evening, 1979 *
Oil on canvas, 33”x35”
Private Collection

Pond on a Summer Afternoon, 1976
Oil on board, 6”x9”
Collection of Elizabeth Blavatsky

Revenant – Deep Creek, 1974 *
Oil on canvas, 23”x18”
Private Collection

Study for Early Snow, 1983
Oil on canvas, 7”x10”
Private Collection

Summer Field, 1980 *
Oil on canvas, 33”x44”
Private Collection

Summer Fog at Steep Ravine, 1999
Oil on canvas, 24”x30”
Collection of Elizabeth Blavatsky

Summer in Chileno Valley, 2003
Oil on canvas, 15”x19”
Collection of Elizabeth Blavatsky

Winter, 2005
Oil on canvas, 53”x64”
Collection of Elizabeth Blavatsky

Paintings and Lithographs by Russell Chatham
Fall Moon Rising, 2005

Lithographs

December Evening, 2004
261/375, 16”x20”
Collection of the Artist

Eagle County in the Fall, 1999/2000
259/275, 34”x45”
Collection of the Artist

Fall Moon Rising, 2005
163/375, 16”x20”
Collection of the Artist

Gallatin Canyon, 1990
197/275, 22”x26”
Collection of the Artist

Gallatin Valley in Winter, 1989
Artist Proof, Edition of 275, 22”x34”
Collection of the Artist

Hayfields, 1995
164/175, 22”x28”
Collection of the Artist

Mt. Tamalpais in the Fog, 2001
261/375, 10”x14”
Collection of the Artist

Silver Bow Winter Dusk, 1991
Artist Proof, Edition of 275, 34”x45”
Collection of the Artist

Snowfall at the Foot of the Absaroka Mtns, 2004
29/375, 20”x16”
Collection of the Artist

Sweetgrass Spring Evening, 1991
219/275, 34”x45”
Collection of the Artist

Willows in the Snow, 1990
224/275, 16”x20”
Collection of the Artist

Winter at Baker Springs, 2003
202/225, 22”x26”
Collection of the Artist

Winter Light, 1992
Artist Proof, Edition of 275, 34”x45”
Collection of the Artist

Winter Pasture, 1999
Artist Proof, Edition of 325, 8”x10”
Collection of the Artist

* Photo courtesy of Bill Dewey

The Poetry of Nature: Paintings and Lithographs by Russell Chatham