Dear readers,

A warm Montana welcome to all of my new readers whom I met at Western Masters / Western Art Week in Great Falls! And, at last, the weather feels like SPRING!! Sunshine, robins, bluebirds, temperatures above freezing, mud...

* Does this email look wonky? See the issue online.

Newsbytes / calendar BOLIVAR, MO - Mar 17-Apr 14: A scratchboard of mine, "Badass" (see the March Artzine), will be showing at the Ella Carothers Dunnegan Gallery of Art as part of the "America's Parks Through the Beauty of Art" exhibition. The piece will go on tour after that. FMI: America's Parks. LONDON, ENGLAND - 3rd-8th June: A scratchboard of mine has been juried into the Wildlife Artist of the Year Exhibition at The Mall Galleries. WHOOHOO!! (read more below) WHITEFISH, MT - June 30: I'll be at the Whitefish Summer social again this year. CALGARY, ALBERTA - July 12: Two works of mine will be auctioned at the Calgary Stampede. CHEYENNE, WY - July 18-31: I'll have work at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Art Show again this year, and I hope to attend the opening. JACKSON, WY - Sept 12-13: I'm honored to be part of the Western Visions show and sale at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. In this issue Report from Western Masters / Russell David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year exhibition	"Hangin' Four" 14 x 11 - scratchboard now showing at Missoula Airport I thoroughly enjoyed giving the sense of bronc and cowboy suspended in midair (hence the title), along with the shadows of fringe and mane.
Tidbits - on spectators (apropos the recent shows) "It is the spectators who make the pictures." (Marcel Duchamp) "Whenever you look at a piece of work and you think the fellow was crazy, then you want to pay some attention to that. One of you is likely to be, and you had better find out which one it is." (Charles F. Kettering) ... LOL "Art is the space between the viewer and the rectangle that hangs on the wall. Unless something of the person that created the work is there, there's nothing for the viewer to take away." (T. Allen Lawson) "I do not believe that art should be explicit. It should be suggestive and ambiguous so the viewer has to enter in." (Balcomb Green) - ED.: this is how I feel about my scratchboards. And my paintings.
Report from Western Masters This was my second time showing with the Western Masters at the Best Western Heritage Inn in Great Falls, MT - a show held in conjunction with the other events of Western Art Week, notably the auctions for the CM Russell Museum. If you've never been to Great Falls for this annual event, you really should put it on your calendar; it's the quickest way I know to overdose on a fabulous quantity and variety of artwork, both traditional and more contemporary. There are artist shows (like Western Masters) and a number of Quick Finish and auction events. It's damned exciting to watch the energetic bidding for some of the pieces by Charlie Russell and his contemporaries. I never get to see my art hung as a body of work, and I was rather pleased with how well it all showed. Both scratchboards and paintings had a warm reception from the many visitors to my exhibit room, and I look forward to doing the show again in the future.
The scratchboard side of my room...	...and the painting side, with some leftovers from Custer's last stand.
David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year Exhibition The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation is a conservation organization funding projects in Africa and Asia to save critically endangered mammals in the wild. (Many of you know that wildlife conservation is near and dear to my heart, drawing my inspiration as I do from the wild places of North America and Africa; I also donate a portion of my income to The Nature Conservancy.) The Foundation holds an annual wildlife art exhibition in London, which serves as one of its fundraisers. I am, therefore, very honored to have my scratchboard of a Siberian tiger selected to hang in the David Shepherd exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London, June 3-8. For more information about the Foundation and the Wildlife Artist of the Year exhibition, please visit www.davidshepherd.org.
"Burning Bright" 16 x 20 - scratchboard David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year exhibition
FOOTNOTE to the March Artzine: Re: the Mike Svob quote from that issue ("That a viewer does not see what the artist intended does not make the composition a failure... In reality all artists speak first to themselves and then to an audience."): "I really feel that what the artist intended is irrelevant; art should resonate with the viewer and have a subconscious appeal to their emotions, whether those emotions are the same as the artist intended is not important, what is important is that the viewer connects with the art." - Simon G. I would tend to agree with Simon on this point: works of art will appeal to different memories, emotions, and life experiences in each viewer, and this is part of what fascinates me as a creator of art.

That's it for April. I hope you have enjoyed this newsletter (and thank you to the many readers who respond after each Artzine, thus giving me good material for the "Footnotes" section :-) - if so, I encourage you to share it with anyone and everyone. I appreciate your help in building a bigger audience for my work!

Warmest regards,
Julie T. Chapman

Painting Today’s Wild West (and Africa!) with Contemporary Flair
(406) 546-2636
20900 Whitetail Ridge Road * Huson, MT 59846
Artsite: www.JulieTChapman.com
Find me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/JulieTChapmanArtist