It is a strange path, this art path. Mark Ogle has been negotiating it for nearly 40 years. Each day he stumbles upon new clues as to where the path might be leading and, perhaps more importantly, how it has brought him here. The question is as practical as it is philosophical, and it raises another query. As an artist from birth, could he have ever really chosen a different path?
These are the questions Ogle finds himself asking on a daily basis as he reflects on a life in art that has earned him the reputation as one of the finest landscape artists in the West. And to be sure, there are plenty of landscape artists in the West.
But there is only one who can be considered the modern visual chronicler of Glacier National Park. Ogle is pleased to be linked to that place of beauty and he’s equally pleased to have successfully completed that ever-so-elusive artistic evolution – the gradual transformation from the idealistic young artist with nothing to lose to the pragmatic business-minded sage who understands what there is to be gained.
“Sometimes I think, ‘My God, you’re one of the elder statesmen in the art market,’” he said. “How’d that happen?”
Ogle actually has a pretty clear idea of how it happened and he wants to share the story of his evolution with a new show entitled “It’s About Time,” which begins at Kalispell’s Hockaday Museum of Arts with a grand opening on June 22 and a reception on June 25 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The exhibit will showcase his works over a four-decade span, a testament to both his longevity and prolific output. He said he has completed at least 6,000 paintings in his career, both watercolor and oil.
While chatting with Lucy Smith of the Hockaday last year, the conversation turned self-reflective for Ogle. Smith asked him the last time he had held a show locally and he said it had been years. Ogle has paintings continually on display at his studio gallery on Center Street, and sells others through his Web site or reputation, but long ago drifted away from traditional gallery shows. But Smith’s offer to hold a show struck a chord.
“She said, ‘I think it’s about time,’” Ogle said. “And I said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s about time.’”
So the show was scheduled and given the appropriate title of “It’s About Time.” Ogle calls it a “retrospective” exhibit, one in which he’s able to take a step back and consider the layered unfolding of his career. Part of it is about personal growth and part of it is about artistic growth, with strong ties between the two. Ogle hasn’t seen some of the show’s paintings, donated by gracious collectors, for 30 years or more.
If there was any indication during his early years that Ogle would become the celebrated painter that he is today, it wasn’t immediately evident to him. He recalls sleeping in a motorhome in a friend’s barn in Washington’s San Juan Islands, waking up at dawn to rowdy roosters and selling his watercolors as a form of rent. One day the actor John Wayne bought a painting of his and then took him out on his yacht. That marked the beginning of Ogle’s understanding of how peculiar the art path can be.
“It’s been seemingly one adventure after another,” Ogle said. “I’ve stayed in the castles with the kings and I’ve slept under the bridges with the bums.”
Ogle decided that to make it in the art world, he needed to find a niche that would be both appealing to him and the purchasing public. He wanted something unchanging, so he turned to national parks. It was that decision that eventually brought him to Glacier National Park, which he said at the time was “almost the forgotten park.” And while he has gone on countless trips and painted hundreds of subjects in his 30 some years in Kalispell, it is his depictions of Glacier for which he is best known.
“The older I get, the more I just want to stay at Glacier,” Ogle said. “That park is my favorite park to paint – you can never paint all of Glacier.”
In regard to the town he calls home, he added: “They’ll bury me here in Kalispell. I’m not leaving.”
Ogle has trained under and worked with luminaries such as Ace Powell and Joe Abbrescia. He has won numerous awards, both regional and national, and been featured in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. But amid the many accolades, the most meaningful accomplishment for him is finding his own voice as a painter. With his show at the Hockaday, the public will get a chance to see how he crafted that voice over the past four decades.
“If you’re a real artist, nobody can beat it out of you; if you’re not, nobody can beat it into you,” Ogle said. “I was never going to be Michelangelo, I was never going to be Rembrandt. I was going to be Mark Ogle.”
Mark Ogle’s gallery is located at 101 East Center St. and can be reached by phone at 752-4217. His Web site is www.markogle.com. The Hockaday is located at 302 Second Ave. East and can be reached at 755-5268.