Theodore Waddell: My Montana

Painter, sculptor and rancher Ted Waddell will read from and talk about a new retrospective of his work, Theodore Waddell: My Montana, on Friday, May 12 at 7 p.m.

Waddell stands as one of the West’s most celebrated contemporary artists. His late modern “landscapes with animals” couple abstract expressionist technique with the creatures – Black Angus cattle, horses, and bison – that populate the high plains and mountain valleys of today’s ranching West.

Edited by Rick Newby, My Montana is richly illustrated with Waddell’s work, and incorporates excerpts from Waddell’s journals and letters, as well as an extensive oral history. The book includes essays celebrating Waddell’s life and art by the Montana curators, critics, scholars, poets and fiction writers who have known him best, including Pat Williams, Greg Keeler, Scott McMillion, William Hjortsberg, Paul Zarzyski and Brian Petersen, among others.

“Theodore Waddell’s vast (and intimate) canvases represent the pinnacle of contemporary Western painting and the telling of his life and work lends rich texture and depth to the evolving narrative of the development of modern and contemporary Western art,” Newby says.

The Helena-based Drumlummon Institute writes that “Ultimately, Theodore Waddell’s works are important, not simply because they bring together disparate traditions but because they stand as emotionally and sensuously resonant works of art that speak of landscapes and animals, life and death, austerity and abundance. They possess, in the words of Seattle Times critic Robin Updike, an ‘immense, poetic dignity.’”

Waddell will be joined by some of the contributors (yet to be announced). The free event begins at 7 p.m. upstairs at Elk River Books, 120 N. Main St. in Livingston, and will be followed by a book signing and reception. For more information, call 333-2330.