Russell Chatham

(b. 1939)
Elk on a Winter Evening, 11" x 15", Original Lithograph, $2,000
Mammoth Hot Springs, 22" x 26", Original Lithograph, $2,000
Please contact the gallery if you are interested in these pieces.  Click on images for details.
Summer Moonrise in the Northern Rockies (232/375), 16" x 20", Original Lithograph, $2,000
August at Deep Creek 23" x 29", Oil, SOLD

About Russell

Russell Chatham (born 1939) is a contemporary American landscape artist and author who spent most of his career living in Livingston, Montana. The artist is the grandson of landscape painter Gottardo Piazzoni, though he is essentially a self-taught artist. His work has been exhibited in over 400 one man shows and in museums and galleries over the last five decades. Notable art critic Robert Hughes is numbered one of Chatham’s collectors and there are others as diverse as Paul Allen and actor Jack Nicholson.   Chatham’s work eschews the narrative tendency of much western art and presents landscapes that stand in intimate relationship towards the human figure even in the absence of it. In the early 1980s Chatham began making lithographs and now stands as one of the world’s foremost practitioners of that craft.

In addition to Lithography, Chatham also produces original oil painting but according to his dealers, he prefers printing lithographs as the more challenging art form.  Despite being a print, Chatham’s lithographs have little to do with modern process lithography, which always starts from a photograph and typically only uses 4 colors. His art lithographs may have 30 or 40 different layers of color, all of which must be hand drawn on to the printing plate, and the colors selected for the final effect. To see some of the early proofs of one of his prints is to see a study in vivid and unusual colors from which it is almost impossible to conceive of the final subtle shadings and quiet colors.

In 2011, Chatham moved from Livingston back to California. He has a studio in Marshall, California.

References:

  • Whiting, Sam (13 May 2011). “Painter Russell Chatham falls on hard times”. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
  • Webb, Jaci (2014-12-15). “YAM at 50: Renowned former Montana artist Russell Chatham paints light on the land :”. Billings Gazette – Entertainment. Retrieved 2014-12-15.
  • Wilkinson, Todd (July 25, 2006). “The Renaissance of Russell Chatham”. New West. Archived from the original on September 18, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2011.
  • Wilkinson, Todd. “To Find Russell Chatham, Look Homeward”. Wildlife Art Journal. Archived from the original on January 5, 2013. Retrieved August 30, 2011.