Award Winning Art
Tornado
An abstract with depth and color chosen for display at Healdsburg Center for the Arts in Napa Valley, late 2020. Displayed at Ashton Gallery, San Diego from October 31 2020 - November 29th, 2020.
Laguna Beach Canyon #20
Multiple Award Winning Painting Laguna Beach Canyon #20. Known for his rich, luxurious background colors, his work compliments the modern contemporary home adding warmth and soft, pleasing yet still vibrant colors in his original oils.
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Arizona #1
Award Winner - J. Mane Gallery. Beauty and elegance is found in simplicity. Arizona #1 is his award winning piece that depicts the Arizona landscape with elegant and simple palette knife strokes. 2020
Welcome
Welcome to the Montana Studio. All my work is done with the highest quality paints and mediums on custom canvas made specifically for me. I do commission work and love doing a large piece for extraordinary spaces. Contact me and let me get started on a custom piece for you.
"Tornado" Chosen for Napa and San Diego Gallery Showings
"Tornado", an abstract by Dutch Montana, has been selected by the judges of the show "Outside the Box", a show at the Healdsburg (Napa) Center for the Arts and the "At Midnight" show in San Diego at the Ashton Gallery on 30th Street beginning October 31, 2020.
Dutch Montana - Coastal California Artist
You can find me at the end of most days at the bottom of a canyon that leads to the Pacific Ocean, perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach, California watching the sunset with my dog Dixie. It is here that I am humbled and amazed each day at the painting that our creator paints for us each day.
I find continuity in both abstracts and expressionist landscapes, and I work on both with a kind of fluidity. I think that simplicity is often more profound than complexity...whether it be in art or mathematics or music. The most powerful ideas in the human endeavor are simple ones, authentic and organic. In an abstract painting, it may be the elegance of the simple black lines combined with the surprise of 2 or three colors on a largely white canvas that make it powerful - such as a Mondrian piece for example.
To me everything is perception. There is no one thing that is one way and that is the only way. What you see and what I see when we look at the beach may be entirely different. This is why expressionism painting is so interesting to me. How many realism paintings are there of the beach in Villefranche-Sur-Mer? Probably millions. A realistic painting of that beach doesn't interest me. I already know what a picture of that beach looks like. So does everyone else. I would rather know what the artists felt and you can't get that in a realistic painting.
I think any artist that is at all self aware would have to admit that they are humbled by what they observe in nature. I mean, how is it possible NOT to feel inadequate when you look at a sunset or sunrise and realize that no matter how hard you might try, you can never replicate on canvas the intensity of the colors you're experiencing or the infinite number of colors and shades that you see. I know that I feel that way. It's inspiring in a way, to feel that way. It makes you appreciate the world in which we live and the beauty that is all around us.
Some people think that being classically trained means you're a "good" artist. I don't even know what "good artist" means. Good according to whom? I wasn't trained anywhere, I'm not classically trained. The beauty of NOT being classically trained is that nobody messed up my mind. Nobody told me what was right or wrong to do this or that in art. This gives me the freedom an artist should have. Nobody taught me how to mix paint, how to use a brush, what brush to use in what circumstance. How to hold a brush or use a palette knife. I've met some amazing artists that are self-taught. The tough part of that route is you make a million mistakes in your journey to find your personal "thing". But there is immense value in this effort, this pain of making mistakes, and that is one learns organically through trial and error and the mistakes - in the end - deliver to the world an artist with authenticity - with truth and originality in their work.
I love Hollywood, Southern California’s coastline, the Western US mountain ranges, and just about everything in the Central Coast region of California. From Santa Barbara to San Diego - that's our French Riviera. Look at the Cote d'Azur and look at the small seaside towns from Santa Cruz to San Diego. Very similar. The native Americans in Sothern California believed in creative supernatural forces and worshiped a "Creation God". Perhaps this explains - in a way - why so many things are created here, why Laguna Beach is the home to so many artists, why there are so many artist colonies in California. These beaches, islands, coastlines, canyons and high desert prairies are my muse.
My dog Dixie and I travel the back-country roads of this state from Monterey south to the Mexican border, from Arizona through to Texas to the Gulf Coast there. If we see a road we haven’t been on before, we take it. My inspiration comes from the surprising landscapes and weather I encounter and photograph on these trips. No place in the world looks quite like it or has the diversity of experience one can find in a single day.
Today I work mostly on canvas using oils – and other medium to create rich texture. I am liberal in my use of medium. I paint with brushes and knives and in some pieces, I creatively use other tools. I like doing pieces that are large – I rarely do small paintings. A recent piece I’ve completed is 8 feet in height by 4 feet wide, made for a 20+ foot tall home entrance stairwell area. I do commissions for restaurants, casino's, hotels, spas, corporate lobbies, executive board rooms, wineries, key locations in fine homes, lobbies of commercial buildings, and luxury cabins and beach homes.
I hope somewhere in my body of work you find a piece that makes you smile, that touches you, that you enjoy.
Sincerely,
Dutch
Dutch Montana in his office in Southern California, Paris time and California time behind him.