Artist Point

By the editors

A regional guide to the galleries, studios, and artists turning Montana's landscape into works of art.

Montana's expansive and rugged landscape has inspired artists for hundreds of years in recorded American history, and likely much longer before that. Just look to the countless western ballads written and sung about its beauty, or the painters and poets who have long made the pilgrimage here in search of something they couldn't quite find anywhere else. Encapsulating this landscape in a singular work of art is a challenge that many have taken on, perhaps none more famously than Charles Russell, whose iconic western paintings in the late 1880s first brought the beauty of this region to the wider world. Now, artists of all different backgrounds and mediums make their way here to let the landscape do what it has always done — stir something deep and send it back out into the world through paint, bronze, photography, and beyond.

Thanks to a thriving community of galleries and studios across the state, nearly every town has a place where you can see how other people interpret the landscape and translate it into their medium of choice. From photographers and painters to sculptors and some truly unique forms of expression in between, the galleries around the region are as diverse as the artists behind them. If you're visiting one of these communities, be sure to stop in and take a look at how others see the world around you. And if you're an artist yourself, or simply someone looking to tap into your own creative side, this guide also covers art supply stores, paint workshops, pottery classes, and other hands-on opportunities to pick up a brush, get your hands dirty, and make something of your own. Whether you're here to admire, to buy, or to create, consider this your starting point.